I don’t remember when exactly I started baking, but most likely I started building up the first skills while playing in my sandbox and mixing sand with water to make it hold a shape when I was about 3 years old. Talking about it, reminds me of the sourdough experiences I currently have.

However, I do remember who I made the first cake for. After it cooled down, I brought it to my elementary-school best friend, and because we lost contact in fifth grade, I must have been about nine or ten years old. I can’t remember how many pancakes I burned before I started baking cakes, but stirring up the pancake batter gave me some real batter-mixing experiences following the sandbox stage. Even though this was a long time ago and one could think I developed pancake-baking skills but I’m still not patient enough to slowly bake more than two pancakes. 

But back to the first cake I made. It was a boxed cake mix and because the cake has several layers, the box had three paper bags with different powder mixes. The box stated the name “Carina Kuchen” from Dr. Oetker (a brand like Pillsbury), and the writings on the box instructed me to add eggs, milk and butter and then fill everything into a self-assembled paper pan to bake it. Only later in life I learned that there are people who can’t even produce a cake with the support of ready-to-use powder, it was so simple to me. Well, I’m sure those people are very good at something where I’m not as gifted, like writing a fantasy novel, operating a full school bus safely, or baking pancakes.

The Carina Cake is a combination of a coffee-cake-like bottom layer but only egg yolks are used for it. The next layer is a meringue made of almond flour, sugar and the beaten egg whites and on top I drizzle thinly sliced dark chocolate before baking it. No fuzz, very simple but when you take a bite it just hits all the right spots, almost always.

Aunt Rosel with her son, 1949

I had almost forgotten about this cake after I stopped baking cake mixes. Until one day, about 10 years after my first cake-bake experience, when I visited my husband’s great-aunt Rosel and she served exactly that cake on her coffee table. She used to bake a lot too and I knew right away that I was just presented the gift of getting the receipt for the Carina Cake from my childhood. This is just one of the recipes I collected over the years and which I treasure.

I’m not a certified baker but I’m baking anyway”

Right after school I studied nursing and I worked almost 2 decades as a nurse. Here in the US I worked as a CNA and Caregiver, Preschool teacher, Administrative Assistant, Director of Health and Wellness, and now as a Sales Assistant. I never learned how to bake professionally and because out of respect for a profession I have a hard time calling myself a baker, but how else would you name a person that makes money with selling home-baked cakes? (I’m open for suggestions)

Hobby Baker, Dessert Assembler, …

My biggest motivator as a kid, to continue baking was how people, who ate my cakes reacted. They would ask things like: “What, you made this all by yourself?” or “This cake is so good! How did you do that?” I was not used to getting that much positive attention and I LOVED it. There had been times in my life when I baked to make people like me, and there had been times when I stopped baking for others, so they had to like me first before I baked them a cake. Today, I don’t care how my baking might affect the feelings other people may have towards me, I just bake and share my cakes with my social circles, because there is only so much cake my family members can eat themselves.

This brings me to where I am today, where I just founded a Cottage Business called Treats from Oma’s Oven. Over the past decades people encouraged me to sell my cakes and I never believed enough in myself to do so, until now. Although I might find some stones in my path that could hinder my success, I plan to beat the odds and treat my customers to a very special experience, and who knows maybe, what in Dec. 2023 started as a humble beginning will hopefully grow into fulfilling my decades old dream of owning a small European-style Cafe.

“Baking unpretentious cakes is my sanctuary and eating from them is an immediate reward, but watching other people while they are eating my cakes gives me pure joy.” – Karola T.