Sweet B's A-grade sweets

The gray toolbox is filled with Ashley Woodward’s utensils. Black containers of dye look like film canisters in the top section. Brushes and other supplies nearly spill from the bottom.

“I’m almost ready for a bigger one,” Woodward says, looking at the box.

Her father has the same one for his tools. Woodward’s found a different use: a cake decoration carrier.

“Cake decorating isn’t difficult,” Woodward says, “it’s just time consuming and tedious.”

Woodward works at Sweet B Design, a Bloomington company that sells photography and custom cake services and doesn’t yet have a storefront. For now, she makes cakes out of the Southern Hills Church of Christ basement kitchen, as well as her own and her parents’ kitchens.

Brooke Eads began the company in 2008 and invited Woodward to join as co-owner fewer than two years ago. It’s a side job for Woodward, who also works in the Monroe County Community School Corporation food service.

“I’m the lunch lady, hairnet and all,” she says.

Woodward’s love of baking started with her grandmother, who used to make all of Woodward’s birthday cakes when she was younger. Now, she uses her grandmother’s recipes in her cake orders, along with those she’s modified from baking books.

Woodward doesn’t have a team or an industrial-sized oven. She has to start early, sometimes a month in advance. It’s not like on the reality cake-baking shows, such as "Ace of Cakes" and "Cake Boss," she says.

“I got an email the other day asking for a three-dimensional Tim Tebow cake by Sunday,” she says. “What day was it? Thursday? I can’t do that. Some people who watch the cake shows don’t realize the time that goes into it.”

Though Woodward says she’s far from cake-show level, she’s picked up a few tricks from watching them, such as using a utensil from a sewing kit — a short-spiked gear with a blue handle — to make her patterned designs look quilted or sewn. She said she knew she needed a similar tool, but after seeing someone use the gear on a show, she went out and found it.

Woodward has developed many skills on her own, not from her culinary art classes at Vincennes University or from "Cake Boss." Before she learned to put icing on her cake stand while decorating, to act as glue to hold the cake down, her cakes slid off onto the table.

“You learn it the hard way, not in school or on TV,” she says. “And it’s usually last minute.”

On Sunday, Jan. 22, Woodward showed off a few of the skills she’s learned by decorating a Styrofoam cake. She started by spreading buttercream icing over the three different-sized layers. Then, she rolled out white fondant, an icing-like substance that is edible but has no flavor. Bakers use it to cover cakes and give them a
smoother look.

“My next big purchase of equipment is something that will roll the fondant out real thin,” she said. “It’s about $4,000 to $6,000. It pulls it through and rolls it out thinner than you can do by hand.”

The machine would make the fondant stretch farther and cut Woodward’s time down considerably — rolling fondant is the most time-consuming part of the process. With the three layers, Woodward spent at least half her decorating time working the fondant.

“Ace of Cakes” star Duff Goldman's brand of fondant has buttercream mixed in, and Woodward uses it because it comes in tubs of different colors. It’s easier to roll out and spread, but it also falls apart and gets holes. As Woodward tried to lay green fondant over the top layer, it began to show the buttercream beneath.

“That’s OK,” she says. “I’ll just have to put a little more decorating on this layer.”
Woodward finished decorating the three layer cake in approximately two hours, using her quilted pattern, tiger stripes and a few sugar-sheet cutouts.

She might not have all the tools she needs now, but she’s getting there, and in a few years, she hopes she and Brooke will have the most important tool: a storefront.

“If you don’t have any kind of patience or anything like that, it’s not the right thing for you to do,” she says. “I’m usually a pretty patient person.”