There’s a kitchen in the Highlands where the apples have worms and the walls are blue. But this is Bridget Kelly’s kitchen, where the apples are soft sculptures with smiling worms and the aqua blue surroundings hint at the whimsy that goes on within.
“I never really decided to sell my cakes – it just kind of happened,” Kelly says of Caketasticals, dessert creations that she makes from scratch at her Ellwood Avenue home. “People heard that I baked and they liked what I made, and they offered to buy it.”
“Caketasticals” are little truffles of handcrafted cake infused with flavors such as espresso, sweet lemon cream, caramel and mint, then covered in chocolate, vibrant icing or toppings. Kelly’s “Cupcaketasticals” echo the original Caketasticals, but on a larger scale. Originally, she says, Caketasticals “were just called ‘cake balls,’ but it just didn’t convey what they were.”
Kelly’s enthusiasm for baking – and for creating good things to eat, see, touch and experience – goes back decades. “I’ve been baking since I was 8 years old,” she says – a passion that culminated when she made 500 filled French macaroons for her wedding to husband Steve last year. “I like doing the Cupcaketasticals just because they’re cute,” she says. “They’re not necessarily the easiest to make, but they’re the most fun. I get to decorate them like little cupcakes and use different kinds of chocolates.”
Kelly obtains all her ingredients from organic sources whenever she can: eggs from cage-free, vegetarian chickens, and organic flour and flavorings, butter, cream and chocolate. Besides the cakes, Kelly loves making peanut butter cookies – still her favorite dessert, despite the fact that she spends her days around peanut butter as an employee at the Algood Food Company in Riverport. (With her schedule, it isn’t unusual for Kelly to bake late into the night.)
Although pretty regimented with her ingredients, Kelly says that everything she does is customizable. She cites a recent birthday party for which she created four different sizes of cupcakes. However, she does have certain limits, such as not working with fondant, the gelatin or agar-based sugar icing that, when rolled out, makes a smooth covering for cakes and pastries. “I like to make things yummy, and fondant isn’t really yummy,” she says. “I love sugar, and I wouldn’t want to make anything that I wouldn’t want to eat myself.” She says she’s currently having fun coming up with the right recipe for a new flavor of cake, requested by a customer. “One lady wanted a green tea cake and so I’ve been experimenting on how to come up with that. I’m trying to find the best green tea powder.”
Kelly loves creating non-edibles too, such as the friendly, soft-sculpture apples. “My hands are always busy,” she says of the clothes, jewelry and little toys she creates. “Anything that I can try to embellish or make rather than buy, I try to make it.”
Keeping busy outside the kitchen is a good distraction from the largest occupational hazard associated with creating edible delights: sampling the goods. “Not eating [the cakes] myself is the hardest part,” she says. “But ... I really love to [bake], so it’s not a hard thing to do. The best part is the alchemy of it all, combining all of the beautiful individual ingredients and making something special and delicious ... like magic. It is so rewarding to make something that brings folks joy.”
Bridget Kelly is available for appointments at (502) 235-2679, or by e-mail at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
. Her Web site, www.squeakypieces.com, also features some of her Caketastical creations.
Eve Bohakel Lee likes small cakes because they have fewer calories. E-mail her at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
, or visit www.leecopywriting.com.