Tempsett Coleman
Blue & White Flash / Staff Writer
Blue, purple and yellow sprinkles. Green, orange and red icings. When you walk into the room, the smell of lemon and vanilla scents floating through the air just hits you. Your mouth begins to water as your taste buds begin to tingle. Then you walk into the kitchen and see her mixing batter, cracking eggs, and shuffling through the room.
She is Mykala Smith, a senior mass communications major from Memphis with a minor in marketing. An entrepreneurial cake creator is what the 22-year-old said she prefers to be called. She uses the word “creator” instead of baker because she takes her time and uses her imagination to bring her ideas to life when baking cakes.
It all started when she was 14 and working at a cookie bakery, but Smith jokingly admits that her love for cooking stemmed from her love of eating. While working at the bakery, she learned to make cookies, brownies, and frosting, all from scratch.
In 2010, when Smith’s brother asked her to make him a birthday cake, she fell in love with baking cakes.
“When I saw how good I was at it and how much I enjoyed it, I took up making birthday cakes as a hobby,” she said.
The hobby soon turned into a business venture, and today Smith bakes birthday cakes for a variety of clients, with prices varying based on size, cost of ingredients and time spent.
Briana Fuller, a customer, compared her cake experience to cakes from major stores such as Kroger and Wal-Mart. Smith made a pink and green AKA-themed cake for Fuller for an October breast cancer awareness forum.
“The cake was very moist and the icing was good and better than Kroger and Wal-Mart,” said Fuller, “because I usually don’t like the icing.”
Smith makes her frosting from scratch, as she does the entire cake. She said it usually takes a whole day to make a cake.
“The cake has to cool before you can decorate, otherwise the frosting will melt,” she explained.
When creating cakes, Smith uses a bright orange mixer stand to mix the cake, a rubber spatula for the frosting, and a cake decorating kit with piping bags, tips, and food coloring.
“To make a cake, the main ingredients are flour, eggs, pudding, and lots of vanilla extract,” Smith said.
The culinary entrepreneur said the basic directions to making a cake are to mix all the ingredients in a bowl, pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees, grease and lightly flour a baking pan, pour mix into the pan and make sure its spread evenly. Then you bake it for 27 minutes, and while it’s baking, begin making your frosting.
Smith said she turned to baking as a stress reliever, because it is one of her passions. Her favorite cake to make is a German Chocolate cake because, “I like to eat the leftover cake batter,” she jokingly admits.
Of all the cakes she’s created for others, her favorite cake was for her best friend’s 21st birthday. The cake was decorated like a pumpkin.
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