Cake, cupcakes, cookies and more: Desserts from The Cake Girl are quite the popular item in south Florida.
Kristina Lavallee, born and raised in Puerto Rico, grew up with the dream of becoming a baker.
The now-successful business owner spoke with Fox News Digital in an interview to discuss her success story and how it all began.
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"My mom, she studied to be a chef. She loves cooking… but I wanted to be baking right around when I was five, if I could recall," she said.
Lavallee said she and her mother would go to the grocery store, and she would eye certain baking items, such as decorations or ingredients, and think to herself — "I want to make that when I get home."
"Obviously, it wasn’t the prettiest, but I would go home and try to mimic what I would see in stores," she said.
After her family moved to Orlando, Florida, when she was 15, she said her dream just continued to grow.
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Lavallee graduated from the University of Central Florida Rosen College of Hospitality Management with not one but two bachelor’s degrees — in hospitality management; and in food service and restaurant management.
Upon graduation, Lavallee began working for various bakeries and restaurants, gaining as much experience as she could.
"I worked at high-end bakeries and also smaller little mom-and-pop shops — and that’s where I really, truly learned how to actually tackle these big cakes," she said.
After spending six years at Publix, a popular supermarket chain in Florida, she said the work felt repetitive to her, and she wasn’t enjoying her craft anymore.
"One manager who believed in me and gave me a lot of freedom would say, and basically kind of push me [and say], ‘You should do your own thing, you’re so talented’," she said.
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While there, she decided to take a leap of faith and start her own business.
She started The Cake Girl with her husband, Kirby. They sold desserts at local farmer’s markets and special events — but with the warm weather conditions in Florida, the two decided to invest in a mobile dessert truck.
"I liked the freedom of traveling everywhere, bringing my sweets and things like that to people," she said.
But around 2018, Lavallee and her husband decided they needed a storefront. And thus, The Cake Girl found a permanent home.
The Tampa, Florida, brick and mortar location brings in a large amount of business weekly — with roughly 25 to 35 specialty cake ordered each week.
With just six other employees, The Cake Girl runs a strong business backed by a love for baking.
"What motivated me every day is just finishing a product, getting it done and delivering the cake," she said.
One of the most memorable cakes, however, had to be the one that she and her team recently did for the G.O.A.T. himself: Tom Brady.
After receiving a request from a fellow Tampa Bay Buccaneer and a loyal Cake Girl customer, Lavallee said she couldn’t believe the person she was being asked to make a cake for — and she recalls her exact reaction.
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"Oh my God, we’re doing a cake for Tom Brady!"
Lavallee and her team spent many hours working on Tom Brady's 45th birthday cake.
So, what did it look like? A goat, of course.
The vanilla cake was simple on the inside, but an honor of a lifetime for these Tampa cake makers.
Lavallee said that seeing customers’ reactions to the cake is what keeps her coming back to work every day, regardless of what’s going on around the world or even in her community.
Hurricane Ian, of course, recently made landfall in Florida as a category 4 hurricane. Lavallee said that although her storefront is OK, many of her customers were impacted.
"We know a few of our customers [are] still without power and [we] had people hold their cakes for two weeks," she said.
Overall, she said the community has come together — and hopes relief is being given to those in need.
