Cake Shoe Diaries Welcomes Shauna Austin

The Sugar Cove is thrilled to welcome Shauna Austin of City Girl Cakes. Based in Nova Scotia, Halifax, Shauna indulged in her passion for sugar full time after 10 years in the financial industry. Completely self-taught in cake design and decorating, let's get put our cake shoes on as Shauna shares with us what inspired her passion for all things sugar.

Had someone told me 10 years ago that I would have my own business making cakes today, I would have laughed and said something like, “yeah – uh-huh, riiiiight”. At that point, I had made one cake. My sister and I thought it would be great to surprise our Mom with a birthday cake. I was 14 and she was 12. She had a Wilton starter set: icing tips, bag, and a small instruction book. We picked the most difficult design and went to work. Baking the cake was not an issue but the icing was a different story. I think we made the all-shortening icing and it was disgusting! Our end result also didn’t look anything like the picture in the book. However, Mom loved it – because she had to – it’s what mothers do.

Fast forward through high school, a Bachelor of Business Administration degree, 10 years in the financial services industry, and 2 kids... and here I am – self-employed and making cakes. It started as many of these ventures do – as an outlet for my creativity, a way to feel energized when my job wasn’t quite doing it for me, and just maybe, create a bit of a second income. I was working full-time with 2 kids in daycare (wondering why I bother to work). A friend suggested we decorate and sell sugar cookies at the local market one weekend just before Christmas, to see if we could make a bit of “fun money” – you know – the money that you can spend frivolously on a great pair of jeans and not feel an ounce of guilt! We did well that weekend, but I felt the cookie process wasn’t fast enough (make dough, roll dough, chill dough, cut dough, chill again, bake, cool, ice, dry, add details, dry, package... there is no end), so I didn’t really enjoy it. I remember loving every minute of making my son’s 1st birthday cake and decided to try that instead. I advertised in the building where I worked and once I had enough photos for a small portfolio, I created a website and a Facebook group. After about a year, I decided to leave my full-time job to dedicate all my time to City Girl Cakes.

My cake philosophy is “who says you can’t have your cake and eat it, too?”. I get such a charge when someone wants an outrageous cake. I also absolutely love creating a theme cake for special occasions. To be able to design a cake that is 100% personalized to the birthday boy/girl, bride/groom, retiree, etc., is very rewarding for me. As with any career or job, there are bad days: cakes break, mistakes are made, the amount of time required for the design is severely underestimated, resulting in very late nights. Then you have to keep your head up, focus on the positive, and carry on! Lots of things motivate me to keep going: getting an email from a very happy customer, hearing about the guests’ reaction to the cake, my kids (ages 6 and 8 are brutally honest) who will come into my cake space and say, “that’s a cool cake, Mom”, watching shows like Ace of Cakes (seriously, I would pack up the kids and move from Nova Scotia to Baltimore to work with that crew!), following my favourite cake designers (too many to name but Anne Heap from Pink Cake Box is a fave), and browsing cakecentral.com, flicker, and endless cake blogs always inspire me.

Every day is a different day in the cake world. I don’t know what the future holds for me, but I am very grateful to be able to make people happy by doing something that I love. If you have a passion for something, I strongly encourage you to explore your options. Is it something that you could start on the side? Follow your dreams – there are no regrets!