The Sweet Life of Jane Knoll

Often the choice of many at birthday parties or anniversaries, cake has fast become a fun and favourite dessert not just for the ones consuming it but for the designers and creators of the cake. With the popularity of the Food Network's TV show "Ace of Cakes", it's no wonder why cake has not only evolved in taste but greatly in appearance. It's now become the main attraction of any event.

Someone making a splash with her cake creations and working to venture out into a full fledged business is 54 years young and mother of four, Jane Knoll. Known popularly as Cakelulu amongst family and friends, Knoll was born in the United Kingdom and came to Canada just shy of five years old. She grew up in Victoria, British Columbia and use to babysit Canadian filmmaker, Atom Egoyan. Knoll now currently resides in beautiful White Lake with her husband, just forty-five minutes from the nation's capital.

Knoll, a lab manager at a high tech engineering firm by day became fascinated with the visual aspect of cakes when her son Jonathan and his now wife, Erin asked her to make their wedding cake. "I was just shocked," she laughs. "I had never made anything other than the basic Betty".

In between the time of her son's engagement, Knoll practiced every week by baking one cake and taking up three classes at Michael's and admits that she knew she was hooked. "There was something about smoothing and decorating it. I could see so much potential for artistic expression."

Soon after that, she decided to perfect her skill by going to Toronto and elaborating her craft at the Bonnie Gordon School. She says it's the best money she's spent on anything to do with cakes and learned so much about the execution of cakes. "It will set you apart from other decorators. That is the main lesson – the biggest lesson. No matter what you do, it has to be done perfectly or as perfectly as you can possibly do. I also think about balance and colour quite a bit. I never ever let sloppy leave my house".

Knoll's work is anything but sloppy. Of spending hours upon hours on the last wedding cake she created during the first weekend of October, she says, "Cakes with figures on them or any sort of elaborate decorations can take hours. When I did a wedding cake this past weekend, it consisted of 17 x 7" cakes and a 3 tier cake. It took twenty hours to bake all the cakes. I baked and froze them as I went along and then it took ten hours to make the gumpaste roses and then it took another twenty-seven hours to finish levelling, filling, icing, applying the fondant and then decorating."

Knoll perfected the art of creating the figures with the help of studying and signing up for Lorraine McKay's online tutorials at her website, Icing On The Cake. Which as Knoll puts it is an excellent way for cake makers to create their own figurines as the tutorials are easy to understand for beginners. She says, "There are pictures for visual learners as well along with printed instructions for them. They are excellent and if you ever have any questions, Lorraine is is superb to answer them. She will help with anything at all."

Sure all the work sounds tiring as it's a lone operation but Knoll laughs. "It has to be something you love. I dream of cakes all day long; in boring meetings, driving to and from work. It's always cakes."

Though with all this baking and designing, it raises the question of how Knoll juggles her current day job with her passion of cakes as they are both very opposite in the career field. She confesses that she has cake sketches in her lab book at work and the whole thing does sometimes present a challenge to her. "I mostly bake after work – evenings, but if there is a complex cake, I have to use up my holidays to be home to finish the cake. Sometimes I work all week and then do cakes on the weekends. I have to make sure I get time off from both so I can rest up and spend time with my hubby. I am limited in the amount of cakes I can do because of working fulltime."
"But decorating fills me with energy," she says. "I love it. It's not a chore. Sometimes baking is the chore but never decorating."

On who her best critic is, she smiles. "My husband is my best critic. He is honest and is also very artistic so he gives me super feedback on the way things should look."

When initially planning out an idea for her cakes, Knoll simply thinks about it for a few days without putting anything to paper. "I just try to feel the cake," she says. "After that, I will often draw it out, [create] several sketches. And then I will decide on a plan. But in the end, you have to be flexible because sometimes due to various things or a better idea coming along. It is mostly that. Making sure that I have the correct supplies and deciding what I can do in advance are big parts of it."

"Mostly my favourites have had drawings," she mentions. Knoll, admits that often after the creation of a cake, she will look back and wonder what she could have done different with it though she always likes the originals the best. "I really like doing different cakes each time rather than repeats, however sometimes customers really want the repeat."

She mainly focuses on big birthday parties, christenings, baby showers, weddings and wedding showers. "First birthdays are popular. Parents want a great cake for that event and I make a little smash cake too – that is for a baby's high chair, so the baby can go for it and the parents can take pictures," she laughs.

Knoll's cake creations are like no other. "I don't do the usual sort of cakes. I always try to do something different, especially with the modeling that I do on some of the cakes."

And it's the modeling – a part of Jane Knoll's artistic expression that is garnering the attention of former American Idol contestants, Michael Johns and Carly Smithson.

Michael Johns, after being voted off too early on in this season of Idol, made an appearance on the Ellen Degeneres Show and that quickly struck a chord with Knoll. "He happened to show his Ellen underwear band, saying that not everyone wore them but he obviously did. It was funny and he was adorable. I just had this "cake moment" thing. I knew I wanted to put that into a cake."

And she did. Creating a large sheet cake with multiple layers and carving into his backside ("the jeans, of course") with his t-shirt pulled up a bit, so that the Ellen underwear band was visible. She put, Michael Johns Rocks with Soul on the t-shirt and his most popular fansite, Michael Johns Online. It was unfortunate though that Michael never had the chance to eat it but she posted photos of it on the fansite, immediately getting much attention from members and making Knoll a favourite and a friend amongst many on the site's message boards.

"I posted it on Michael Johns Online for the fan girls," she laughs. "They loved it and I posted it on his MySpace, just for fun. I was a little uptight [thinking] that he might think it to be rude, seeing as it was his backside that was carved but it was just for the underwear band."

Soon after the creation of the cake, a friend of Knoll's told her that when she had met Michael during the American Idols Tour this past summer that he had indeed seen the cake and laughed about it. He soon mentioned Knoll and her cakes in an interview with Syracuse.com's reporter, Jennifer Curinga after meeting Knoll and a few buddies from the Michael Johns Online message boards at the Toronto show at the Air Canada Centre on July 26th.

"The second cake was the Fan Girl cake I took to Toronto and he actually saw it. He got it and he loved that one. He took pictures of it on his phone and showed people. And then when he mentioned the cakes on the Syracuse interview, I couldn't believe it at all. I went crazy. I was blown away," she says of the whole thing.

Amidst all the traveling and putting the finishing touches on his solo record due for release sometime in January or February, Michael Johns was kind enough to message me via his MySpace that, "Jane is a special lady. She made me the most memorable cake I have ever received. Her creation was nothing short of amazing. She has such a wonderful outlook on life and her passion spreads through anyone she meets."

However, Michael isn't Jane Knoll's only fan. Carly Smithson became a fan of her work when they met for the first time at the Toronto show; she pointed out to Michael on the cake a model figurine of his dog, David Puddy.

Knoll sent a message to Carly's mother, Marie Murray via her official MySpace page to thank Carly for helping her get the cake she created in Toronto to Michael. "She [Carly] was so helpful and just as warm and lovely as can be. Then her mom asked me if I would consider making Carly's birthday cake. I freaked out," she exclaims. "I was so excited."

And the creator in her did just that. She met up with four other members from Michael Johns Online so that they could all go to the Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania concert and with the help of webmasters Cheryl and Melanie of Carly's Angels.net, Carly celebrated her birthday with a gorgeous cake that brought a huge smile to the singer's face and personally thanked Knoll for the beautiful cake.

It also helps to know that if you've got fans that they are nothing short of enthusiastic. Knoll says, "When Carly told Michael that she was going to thank me for the cake on stage, Michael simply told her, 'Just remember Carly, she was my fan first!' and Carly laughed at that."

The cake maker recollects the moment that Carly thanked her in front of the entire Wachovia arena to be a highlight. "I was on those huge screens and I don't remember what I did. I suspect my hands were over my face," she laughs.

Cheryl, one half of the webmasters at Carly's Angels.net sings Knoll's praises. "I think that's what strikes me the most about Jane is that she puts so much care into her cakes. I got to see Carly's cake close up and the cake itself was amazing. It was so professional and beautiful – you could tell how much time she'd spent on the cake alone plus the topper. I got to really study the figurine on the top and I was so amazed. It was perfect - the costume, the tattoo on the arm, the blue eyes, the individual strands of hair. You can tell that Jane loves making these cakes because of the amount of care and joy that is in every bit of her creations."

Marie acknowledged Knoll's cake as fantastic and admits, "Every detail was quite incredible. Carly was so overwhelmed and that was the last time I was going to see my daughter as we were leaving the next day, so Jane's cake presentation has a special memory for me and also Michael worked so hard to keep it secret from her and he was so funny about it.

"The most amazing part of the cake for me was the way Jane copied the tattoo to perfection on Carly's arm as you can imagine the arm was small and she got every detail. I am so in debt to Jane as she really made my trip and Carly's birthday for me."

With all the attention Knoll is getting, it would make perfect sense to break out into a business much like Toronto's The Cupcake Shoppe or Vancouver's popular Cupcakes by Heather and Lori. "Some of the competition is very good but I think I have unique cakes and a look that people want judging from all the business I have gotten, just by word of mouth.

"I keep my work neat and my designs are fairly unique so people like that and they taste good. I think I am as good as the competition and maybe better in some cases. I would like to make cakes for very special events in people's lives. I think I just need to keep on doing what I am doing and if I can do a few more high profile cakes, well that never hurts."

So far, Knoll has created cakes for customers through word of mouth and don't let that fool you. It's kept her quite busy. At the moment she and a friend are creating the website for her business called, Cakelulu, which translates appropriately to Cake Crazy. The site will be designed to allow customers to contact her, showcase her creations, order customised cakes and ship them out. At some point she also sees Cakelulu – the business, offering classes in the edible arts created for cake enthusiasts, aspiring cake makers as well as those who wish to advance their technical skills and design. "My focus is to have a business. Ideally do it fulltime," she smiles.

On asked who she'd like to create cakes for now that she's gotten a taste of the sweet celebrity life, she laughs. "Someone like Ellen Degeneres, I loved the way she promoted Michael and she is very cool and funny. I wanted to make her wedding cake. I would love to do a cake for the Jolie Pitt's too." But she also confesses she's a little shallow and would like to create a cake for Hugh Grant. "I love most of his movies and I love him."

With all the cakes she's created over the years, a few stick out in her mind as absolute favourites. "I love my Carly Smithson and Michael Johns cakes, the hatbox, the suitcase which was created for my son's stag and doe party and my son's wedding cake. It took six hours to pipe the dots on."

Though there is no immediate rush to open her website and get her business moving, Knoll says she can't just leave her job just yet but is certain about the Cakelulu venture. "I want to do this – make cakes. Even for the amount I make currently."

Jane Knoll's cake creations are not only a testament to her imagination and creativity but the extent she would go to simply make others around her completely happy, even if it's for a brief moment before they finally slice into the cake. She believes that one must have a great imagination when it comes to creating such cakes. "A big imagination and patience. You need patience and inspiration and imagination. That's all. I think everyone has creativity, it's whether you find the right outlet for it. I think it should be encouraged in everyone. We all have it."

And with Michael Johns being her American Idol, Knoll resonates with him on a level of great respect and admiration. "Michael said that people with passion inspire him. Well, that goes for me too. Don't give up on your dreams. If you dream hard enough, it very well might come true."

One thing that some may often wonder about Knoll and her cakes is since she has an immense amount of dedication to the creations, does she find it hard to let go of them and allow them to be just cakes?

Knoll laughs and grins saying she never gets upset when they cut into a cake. She wants the customer to not only appreciate the art but the main purpose of the cake – to eat and enjoy it. But there is one condition, she states. "The only thing I need is some oooh and awww for the cake. I hardly want to say it but it sort of makes it okay to cut after that."

Something tells me that Jane Knoll will be hearing a lot of that once Cakelulu is up and running and customers are flocking to her sweet and artistic desserts.