Her Star is Rising

By Joseph Domelowicz

For the Transcript

Local cake designer Amanda Oakleaf, owners of Amanda Oakleaf Cakes at 1 Pauline Street, in Metcalf Square, has been getting quite a bit of national exposure lately.

Last March, she and her husband Tyler, flew to Denver to take part in The Food Network’s Cake Challenge show, competing against four other cake designers from around the country for a $10,000 prize. She didn’t win that challenge, though the end of the show was quite exciting, and this year she and her Winthrop based cake designing team are preparing to be showcased on the TLC network’s Fabulous Cakes show, during its recent visit to Boston.

“They just called us and asked if we’d be on the show,” said Oakleaf, about being asked to appear on the Food Network Cake Challenge Dora the explorer episode. “The Fabulous Cakes show was a Boston-based episode, so they were looking for cake designers in Boston and we’ll be a part of a show that follows several cake designers, as they work on large projects.”

The TLC episode is tentatively scheduled to appear on February 8, but Oakleaf cautioned that the episode has already been pushed back once by the network, so fans of her cake shop should check out their local listings or visit Oakleafcakes.com, for the latest news on when the episode will air.

“Doing the Cake Challenge was really stressful, because we had to bring everything with us and it was just me and Tyler,” explained Oakleaf. “Cake, frosting, tools everything had to be brought out and we didn’t know what to expect.”

By contrast, she said taping the footage for the TLC show was fun because her entire staff got to take part in the episode and it was filmed locally.

“We really can’t say much about the show, except that we hope people will tune in to see it and it was a lot of fun,” she said.

Oakleaf began cake designing in the fall of 2008, when she was still living in Boston.

“Then we moved here, and I was still working out of a residential kitchen and then we got busy enough that we needed a store and we opened the shop in April (2010).”

It has been a quick rise for Oakleaf from small, home-based business to retail shop owner tonationally known cake designer, but she keeps the focus on her shop and her love of designing great cakes.

“Basically, anything you can think of, we can make a cake out of it,” she said.