Hannah Kiehl’s cakes delight customers
Two-tiered cake which was used to promote a wedding business (Photo courtesy of Hannah Kiehl)
By Annika Umholtz, staff writer, Emerson Parker, news editor
Cakes are one of the most important foods of American culture. Wedding cakes, birthday cakes, anniversary cakes, or even just-for-fun cakes are enjoyed by people across the world and right here at home. Hannah Kiehl, a sophomore here at Maria Carrillo, started her cake-baking journey around the end of 2020 with the attempt to make herself a birthday cake, which led to the discovery of her passion.
Shortly after creating her first cake, Kiehl held a part-time job at a bakery owned by her friend’s mom during the summer of 2021. This experience helped her learn how to prepare and decorate cakes.
Through word of mouth, she has sold approximately fifteen cakes since starting in July 2022. Over the school year, except for her busiest weeks, she is able to dedicate a few hours each weekend to baking. She spends around four hours—including chilling time—for each cake.
Her cakes are beautifully decorated with buttercream icing, fresh fruits, and bright flowers. Each flower is of the nonpoisonous type and has its stems wrapped in plastic wrap and put in a plastic drinking straw as an additional safety measure.
Kiehl starts by planning out what flavor and decoration she wants to use, she then bakes the cake layers, chills them, cuts the tops off the layers so they're flat, and stuffs them with various fillings. A thin layer of buttercream coats the cake to hold in the crumbs. The cake is then chilled again until the coat is firm, finally finished with a layer of buttercream and the placement of decorations.
A cake for an elderly couple’s fiftieth anniversary (Photo courtesy of Hannah Kiehl)
Kiehl has a standard list of cakes such as chocolate, carrot and cream cheese, pumpkin cream cheese, vanilla berry, and chocolate raspberry, the final being her favorite type of cake. That said, she is also able to make custom cakes according to what customers order.
For one order, Kiehl baked a two-tiered wedding cake decorated with roses for a photoshoot to support the local wedding industry.
For her final presentation in her freshman year Humanities class, Kiehl says, “I made a mini cake from different continents to discuss the way that food can represent different cultures. If I remember correctly, I made a traditional Persian love cake, fa-gao (a Chinese prosperity cake), a chaja cake from South America, and meskouta from Africa.”
She also periodically makes cakes as gifts for people, including her family. “My family supports it. They enjoy eating my cakes, and I regularly make cakes for events and their birthdays.” While Kiehl has stated that she doesn’t want to pursue a career in baking, she enjoys the creative aspect of cake decorating as well as testing out new flavor combinations. So, though this might not be practice for a future career, it is an amazing passion.
Chocolate Raspberry cake decorated with roses (Photo courtesy of Hannah Kiehl)