Amber Wright's newest creations are small, round and covered in chocolate.
A mother of three with a love of and talent for cake decorating, Wright runs a small bakery out of her home in Richmond, called Under the Frosting. Her latest item on the menu are bite-sized pieces of cake on a lollipop stick, a new trend in the baking world called cake pops.
"I've always known that I wanted to work for myself," Wright said. "If you love what you do, you never have to work, and that's really how I feel. I feel like I'm not working, I'm just playing around in my kitchen, decorating something pretty."
Wright makes cakes, cupcakes and other treats for birthday parties, baby showers, graduation parties and other get-togethers. She even makes the occasional wedding cake, although weddings are not what drives the majority of her business.
"The first thing that pops into your mind when you think cake, is wedding," Wright said. "But there are so many different reasons to have a cake."
Through trial and error, Wright has developed about 60 of her own cake recipes. She said most recipes take her a few days to perfect, but some, such as her popular carrot cake recipe, have taken months.
For each new recipe, she researches about 10 existing recipes, determines what ingredients they all have in common, and adds different flavorings and extracts to her basic cake recipe.
"I think my husband has gained about 50 pounds, with me being like, ‘you need to try this, how does it taste? Does this taste like eggnog?'" Wright said. "I've gone through as many as 30 cakes to come up with one recipe."
Wright's signature cake flavors include eggnog, red velvet cake, chocolate peppermint, mimosa (made with orange juice and ginger ale), carrot cake and the traditional vanilla and chocolate.
Wright uses all of her original cake flavors in her cake pops as well. She first got the idea for the bite-sized delicacies from a TV show - in which a bakery presented a woman with baby-themed cake pops for her baby shower.
"I was just kind of thinking to myself, those are really interesting," Wright said. "It's relatively new, it's not something that a lot of people do or see. It's very unique."
The process to create the miniature sweets on a stick wasn't easy, however. Wright looked up several recipes, then went to work experimenting with different combinations. First, she added too much frosting and corn syrup, and the cake pops turned out sickly sweet, she said. On her second try, the chocolate solidified instantly when it came in contact with the sugar in the batter.
Frustrated, Wright just couldn't seem to make it work - until her husband came home one day with a cake pop maker for her birthday. The small plug-in machine has six round wells, each of which holds one flat tablespoon of any kind of cake or donut batter, Wright said.
After just six minutes, the machine produces six perfectly cooked balls of cake, which Wright gently removes with two spoons and places in a pan to cool. Although the machine has a non-stick surface, she always sprays it with cooking spray to ensure easy removal, with some types of cake batter more prone to stick than others.
Before dipping the one-inch cake balls into chocolate, Wright freezes them. Without this step, Wright said the cake will simply fall apart in the melted chocolate. Once the cake is frozen, she dips the lollipop stick in the chocolate first, something she said keeps the cake from falling off the stick later. She then carefully inserts the stick about halfway into the cake ball, then swirls it around in the melted chocolate until the cake is completely covered.
Once the chocolate is dry, Wright said the cake pops can be stored in the fridge - not the freezer, otherwise the chocolate will crack and shatter - and can be decorated for all sorts of occasions. She likes to dye the chocolate pink, green, blue, red or other bright colors, and then pipes a frosting Christmas tree, Valentine's Day heart, Fourth of July star of Halloween jack-o'-lantern directly onto the cake pop.
Wright makes her cake pops to order in any flavor, for any occasion. She charges $5 per half dozen, with an extra $5 for the entire order for frosting decorations. Chocolate, nuts and sprinkles are free.
Wright likes to make the cake pops on an assembly line - her freezer is always stocked with bags of cake balls ready to be dipped and decorated. A rack in her kitchen is piled high with packages of powered sugar, lollipop sticks and other baking supplies.
Wright said she's currently saving up for a down payment on a brick-and-mortar store, but for now, her three-year-old business is doing well. She keeps busy with orders for parties and events year-round.
"I love to do deliveries - I love to go to the child's birthday party, and deliver them their cake, and just see the look on their face," Wright said. "It's just amazing to me, just to make people happy. That's the best part."
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