“IT’S NOT JUST A CAKE, IT’S AN EXPERIENCE”
– Jewel Burgess, Owner of Cake Jewel.
When Jewel Burgess made her son a birthday cake from scratch, she had no idea the journey it would take her on. From baking competitions, to singing cakes, she truly creates edible masterpieces.
Only a few months after making her first cake, Jewel began to receive requests for custom cakes and in December of 2014, she took her first customer. In 2015, Cake Jewel was officially born and she has been baking everyday since then.
The cake aficionado first began her journey by learning everything there was to know about creating masterpieces out of cakes. She began by learning how to make tiered cakes, wedding cakes, cupcakes, cookies, and countless other delicious treats. After teaching herself the basics, her style really began to take shape and she found her niche of cake sculpting, also known as realism.
Jewel specializes in novelty cakes, sculpting them to look like anything her clients ask for. This talent is what has made her cakes so famous.
Each cake she makes is always the first of its kind. When asked what the most unique cake order she’s ever received was, Jewel revealed,
“The craziest cake I made was a full sized cake of Kim
Kardashian… everything was proportioned. She was 5 feet
tall.”
She goes on to explain that her favorite cakes to make are her food inspired cakes. These cakes are incredibly life-like. The Kim Kardashian cake was completed with a teammate while on the show “Cakealikes” in 2021.
“One of my favorites was a Sicillian square pizza. I put it on the counter and didn’t say anything and my family thought we were having pizza.”
In addition to incredibly realistic food cakes, Jewel takes realism to a whole new level by creating cakes with moving elements. On a cake for her music producer daughter, the cake master created a drum machine complete with lights and a button that when pressed, played her daughter’s music. She has also made keyboard cakes that actually play music.
When asked about her ideation process for her incredible cakes, Jewel responded,
“Everything that I see can be turned into a cake. I’ll get an idea and then take a picture of it to get inspiration. I’ll draw for a while and start building.”
She is currently in the process of making a car cake. This particular cake will be a Nissan Sentra. For this cake, Jewel purchased the car’s blueprints so that everything is in proportion and then makes it the size that the customer wants.
Many of her masterpieces take anywhere between 20 and 25 hours to complete.
Along with being a cake artist and sculptor, Jewel is also a handywoman, making her own structures for the cakes out of wood, metal, and PVC pipes. This ensures that the structure of each cake is solid.
“My greatest accomplishment or what keeps me going is seeing my customers’ faces,” said Jewel, reflecting on her greatest accomplishment with Cake Jewel. “I like that I can create a cake from someone’s vision… They have these pictures that last forever and look back on. It’s memories that last forever.”
With each cake, Jewel creates a detail that her customers can keep forever. She explains, “Sugar stilettos or high heels, those keep for years.” To create an even more memorable experience, she adds personal touches, like her customer’s name, to the long-lasting sugar pieces. These little touches create a memory that her customers can look back on and remember for years to come.
In 2016, Jewel was contacted by Food Network to be a contestant in the Halloween baking challenge, “Halloween Wars”, that would air in 2017. There her team participated in seven rounds where each of the cakes had to be at least three feet or taller.
This invitation began her love of competing and challenging herself to create out-of-this-world cakes. She has just finished her third baking competition show.
She explained the competition process as, “a stressful rush,” elaborating that contestants are under a time constraint of seven hours to build their gigantic cake. “I love the process,” she said, reflecting on the hard work it takes to build and sculpt the cakes.
When asked what has been her biggest inspiration through starting and running her business, Jewel responded,
“My son. He has always been the inspiration for the business. And my kids, they’re who I do it for and to show them how to go for what you want. If you have a talent or skill you can be the best at what you do.”
“I do what I do because I love it. It’s a passion of mine,” she said.
When talking about her goals for Cake Jewel, she shared that her biggest goal is to continue to participate in as many baking competitions as she can. In addition, she would also like to share her talents by creating training blogs and tutorials.
“I want to teach, and actually have taught several classes, out of my home. I want to teach more of how to build structures and how to do the novelty style cake,” Jewel shared.
From her first cake, to all her cakes now, Jewel has brought joy to so many people through her delicious confections.
Jewel Burgess is an insured customer at FLIP. Learn more about Cake Jewel and see her amazing cakes on her website. For more Information about FLIP or baker insurance, take a look at our online insurance programs or contact one of our licensed insurance agents today.
