Sherrie Blackwelder looked down at her daughter, Isabella.
“What’s your favorite thing to do with mommy?” she asked.
“Play Candy Land!” responded 4-year-old Isabella.
Blackwelder’s 2-year-old son, Ira, ran around the room, gleefully giggling as his older sister chased him.
“Those are the moments you don’t want to miss,” she said and smiled.
But up to July, those were the memories 27-year-old Blackwelder missed while she managed her new business, Cake Classics. Busy trying to manage orders, Blackwelder didn’t have much time to spend at home.
She brought her kids to work sometimes, but most of the time they stayed at home with a babysitter, who always knew what the kids needed.
Because she wanted to spend more time with her children, Blackwelder decided to move Cake Classics into her home in July, a year after the Cottage Food Law passed in Florida. Now her hours center on her children’s naptimes and bedtimes.
“Kids need consistency,” Blackwelder explained, “and I didn’t have that with the bakery.”
The Cottage Food Law went into effect in Florida in July 2011 and allows individuals to manufacture, sell and store products from an unlicensed home kitchen. The Florida Department of Agriculture oversees and enforces the law, and it gives people the option to sell items like lollipops and bread from their homes but bans other items like dried meats.
Blackwelder doesn’t have to get an extra license to sell cakes from her kitchen as long as she doesn’t make more than $15,000 a year from the endeavor.
Blackwelder’s cakes start at $5 a serving, and her vegan creations start at $6 a serving. According to Cake Classics’ website, Blackwelder is the only baker in North Florida who focuses on organic and vegan cakes.
She said the law is a win-win for her. She gets to keep her cake-making hobby and doesn’t have to pay a babysitter.
These days, the Blackwelder home is filled with Spanish and swimming lessons with mommy, potty training for Ira and, of course, lots of cake.
Baking happens during naptime, and Blackwelder said she decorates the cakes once she gets the kids to sleep at about 8:30 p.m.
Making a cake, especially a four-tiered cake, isn’t a one-day process, she said. A single cake can take about 10 hours.
“People think it’s supposed to go by so fast,” Blackwelder said, speaking slower and slower to exaggerate her point. “This is not McDonald’s.”
Blackwelder’s journey to the bakery business began in 2006 when her friend was planning a wedding on a tight budget. Blackwelder, using the baking sense she had from her aunts and grandma, offered to make her friend’s wedding cake — a monster of a project with white chocolate ganache.
“It’s actually a pretty difficult cake,” she said and laughed.
During the following three years, Blackwelder made six more wedding cakes for family members and friends.
Then she had her own wedding — though she didn’t make the cake — and graduated from UF with a wildlife ecology degree. She intended to attend veterinary school, but she and her husband had to make a choice: vet school or children.
She chose children.
It wasn’t until 2010 that she showed up at Cake Classics asking to be trained to be a cake maker. Four months later, she took over the business alongside her sister-in-law.
But being a working mom was more demanding than she had anticipated.
When the Cottage Food Law passed, she jumped at the opportunity to move her business into her home.
When the kids aren’t sleeping, she lets them play at their own tiny table while she works. She gives them leftover fondant and dull decorating tools and lets them pretend they’re professional chefs.
While she said it can be overwhelming, especially when she stays up past 2 a.m., she’s thankful she doesn’t need to go anywhere else.
“Even though this is still a lot of work,” she said, “at least I’m at home.”
Blackwelder said her husband stays up with her when she has work to do.
Ethan, a software developer, likes that his wife can work at home now, especially for his kids.
“They like it,” he said. “They got their momma all day now.”
Sherrie Blackwelder’s children Isabella, 4, and Ira, 2, wield their favorite baking utensils with their mother on Monday night at their home in Gainesville. Blackwelder makes cakes and other desserts out of her home for her business, Cake Classics.
Sherrie Blackwelder, owner of Cake Classics, cuts a layer to fill with chocolate buttercream frosting in her home in Gainesville on Monday. After she fills the layers, she will stack and shape them for a client.
