Flash Sale Pricing is Live - USD $40 OFF!
Menu
The Bake Fest is an online event that will be held from 8:30 AM to 8:00 PM CDT (GMT-5) on May 20, 2023 and May 21, 2023. We realize that based on your time zone you may not be able to attend the entire event. That’s why your ticket includes event recordings available for one year after the event so that you’ll be able to catch up on anything you miss and rewatch your favorites.
In this class sponsored by LorAnn Oils, we’ll be making Courtney’s Coconut Key Lime Pie Cake with Courtney’s favorite LorAnn emulsion flavors, coconut and lime. Courtney will share how to make her light and fluffy coconut cake, how to stack a cake with a soft filling, and how to decorate her Coconut Key Lime Pie Cake. She’ll also talk about her other favorite LorAnn flavors she uses in her cakes.
Learn why it’s important to create your own line of custom products, how to generate revenue with them, choosing products, financing, and sourcing.
You have been operating as a solo-entrepreneur for some time and you’re ready to hire a team (or at least one person to help out!). Bringing on staff can be both a relief and a stress, as it is not always easy to hire and to delegate the work that you’ve been managing yourself. Learn best practices for building and managing a team before you even make that first hire. Taking a proactive approach, with the right tools in place, will ensure that you and your team are well set up for success. This session will cover crafting job descriptions, setting performance expectations, and designing training materials and product specifications.
Take a deep dive into the many scientific factors that go into baking the perfect chocolate cake. In this class, you’ll learn how to tweak a recipe to achieve your ideal cake texture and flavor by leveraging leaveners, fats, mixing techniques, chocolate types, and much more!
In this class, Anthony will explain simply what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is and the steps to use it to grow your baking business.
You’ll see real-life examples, what worked for Anthony at his bakery, Pastreez, learn about the challenges to overcome as a baking business, and hear about the tools that are easy to use to help you grow online!
Learn all about the products and services that our sponsors offer, plus win attendance prizes from select brands.
Learn all about the products and services that our sponsors offer, plus win attendance prizes from select brands.
Learn all about the products and services that our sponsors offer, plus win attendance prizes from select brands.
Join Alejandra and learn all about fondant cake decorating! The class will cover how to make your own delicious fondant, how to create a fondant marble effect using food coloring, and how to cover your cake in fondant while getting a smooth finish.
Dive in deep to the process of making a perfect pie crust by hand, including additional manipulation techniques to achieve a variety of different textures and end results. Learn about par and blind baking and when to utilize these techniques to achieve a perfect pie – every time!
In this class, you’ll learn the basic skills of decorating cookies with royal icing all while completing four summery cookie designs. Main skills include royal icing consistencies, outlining and flooding cookies, wet-on-wet technique, and royal icing transfers.
Take a deeper look into the most overlooked yet essential baking ingredient: leaveners. We will cover baking powder, baking soda, and more. Learn why leaveners are important, what they are, how they work, and how we can use them to elevate our baking.
Creating social media content is one of the most frustrating parts of the baking business life! We know we have to create content, so we take thousands of photographs and video clips that we never ever get to post. Then, after all of our hard work, we either forget to post or post and Instagram decides not to show it to anyone! Whhhhhyyyy? So many bakers just don’t bother, or they just stick up any old post and hope for the best. But, in this session, you’re going to learn Natasha’s method for never running out of content, how to create content that actually converts browsers into buyers, and how to plan a month worth of content in just 30 minutes!
Bitsy (Denea) will walk you through her entire process of baking, creating, and shipping her infamous cake jars in a brand new flavor – Banana Rocher! You’ll get recipes for the banana cake, Nutella buttercream, ganache, and chocolate hazelnut wafer crunch – plus, you’ll learn how to properly assemble and ship cake jars.
Chloe Joy Sexton shares her journey from home baker to bakery owner, international cookie seller, and baking influencer with more than 2 million followers. Chloe will share how social media marketing and sharing your own journey (even the ugly bits) can grow your own baking business.
In addition to this inspirational closing keynote address, find out if you’ve won any of the prizes, plus hear an exciting announcement from The Bake Fest and Retail Bakers of America.
Janie Deegan is the founder of Janie’s Life-Changing Baked Goods. Baking holds a special place in Janie’s heart as it gave her hope, strength and inspiration after she struggled with addiction and homelessness as a young adult.
Since 2015, Janie’s Life-Changing Baked Goods has been changing lives with baked goods. Janie’s is dedicated to helping other young women through mentorship and second chance employment.
Janie’s Life-Changing Baked Goods specializes in Pie Crust Cookies. Inspired by Janie’s quest to get the perfectly proportioned bite of pie, she invented a cookie where each bite promises the perfect balance. Each bite delivers a flaky crust and a heavenly layer of filling and buttery caramelized streusel. This cookie has won Janie all sorts of awards, made her a Food Network Chopped Sweets Champion, and given her a purpose in life.
Inspired by traditional family recipes and Scottish flavours, Coinneach MacLeod, the Hebridean Baker, has been Scotland’s best-selling cookbook author for the past two years.
Coinneach was born and raised on the Isle of Lewis, the most northerly of the Outer Hebrides. His cookbooks and online videos (watched by over 25 million people) have inspired millions around the world to bake, visit Scotland, learn Gaelic, enjoy a dram or two of whisky and to seek a more wholesome, simple life. The Hebridean Baker showcases Scotland’s extensive larder and brings us flavourful dishes with a story to tell and aims to bring the best of Scotland to a worldwide audience.
Courtney Rich is a self-taught baker whose love of baking and obsession with cake went from an occasional hobby to a passion just seven years ago. It’s now something she shares with over 500,000 followers on Instagram as Cake by Courtney. Teaching herself through trial and error, Courtney develops and shares her recipes and tutorials so other home bakers can create great tasting and beautiful looking cakes. Courtney also teaches classes at Orson Gygi in Salt Lake City, recently published her first cookbook, designed her own product line of cake tools, hosts a podcast, and has been featured in O! Magazine, The Today Show, The Kelly Clarkson Show, Hallmark Home and Family, Extra TV, and entrepreneur.com. Courtney also makes monthly appearances on Studio5 in Salt Lake City.
Prior to cakes, and even when she first started her blog, Courtney freelanced in television research as a focus group moderator. She worked with many of the top broadcast and cable networks in the industry to test new and existing television shows, as well as talent performance and website usability. Some of her clients included ABC, NBC, Viacom, Martha Stewart, Lifetime, Discovery Channel, TLC, and Warner Brothers, to name a few.
Prior to her 13-year career in television research, Courtney worked as a producer for KUTV in Salt Lake City and a writer and report for Celebrity Justice, a news magazine show developed by the creators of Extra.
Courtney holds a Bachelor’s degree in Broadcast Journalism from BYU.
Courtney is married and a mom of two kids, Westin (14) and Avery (9).
Julia M. Usher is a world-renowned sugar artist most recognized for her pioneering work in 3-D cookies. She is also the author of two books, 13 e-books, and an app, all about cookie decorating. When not spreading her love for cookie art in classes across the globe or online, Julia produces videos for her popular YouTube channel and website; oversees Cookie Connection™, the world’s largest online cookie decorating community; designs cookie stencils and cutters under her JULIA brand; and manages Julia M. Usher’s Cookie Art Competition™, which was filmed in 2019 for a Food Network documentary. Julia is Past President of the International Association of Culinary Professionals and has received multiple food writing, decorating, and video awards, including James Beard Food Writing Award finalist (2008), Cordon d’ Or Food Writing Award winner (2009), Cake Masters Magazine Cookie Award winner (2013), Oklahoma State Sugar Art Show (OSSAS) Medal of Honor (2014), both Edible Artists Global Academy Association (EAGAA) US and International Sugar Artist of the Year Awards (2016), Cake Masters Magazine Cookie Icon (2018), TASTE Breakout Foodie of the Year (2019), and Best Online Cookie Decorating Classes from The Spruce Eats (2020). She is also a two-time Global Sugar Hero finalist in the Australian Cake Artists & Decorators Association (ACADA) annual Cake Oscar Awards (2021/2022), and a 2023 finalist in the global Positive Leadership Awards for her impact on the cookie arts community. Most recently, Julia launched a series of licensed 3-D cookie decorating courses in Asian markets with the highly regarded Japan Salonaise Association. Her favorite mantra is “live sweetly”, which she urges everyone to do every day!
Denea “Bitsy” Gresham founded Bitsycakes in 2017 shortly after deciding to leave her position as executive pastry chef at a million-dollar catering company. She had already graduated from the nation’s premier culinary school (CIA 2010) and had years of experience in the industry under her belt. She knew that the time was right to take a chance and bet on herself!
Bitsy gathers her motivation from her 5 year old autistic son, Zachary, whom she cares for while managing all the day to day operations of Bitsycakes.
Above all else, Bitsy prioritizes providing memorable moments for her clientele and students! She uses all of her experience and knowledge obtained over the past 13 years to educate, inspire, and brighten everyone’s days!
Hi! I’m Fred, also known as Doc Macaron on social media. I am a scientist turned pastry chef.
I have always had a sweet tooth and really enjoyed pastries, but I was never really a baker before the pandemic.
Initially, I focused on macarons, which are known for being particularly difficult to bake. I spent countless hours experimenting, trying to see how many parameters can contribute to making a successful (or unsuccessful) macaron. This opened my eyes to a whole new perspective of the science of baking and, as a scientist, I got hooked.
I made the big decision to make baking more than a hobby and earned a pastry chef degree. My brand primarily focuses on different aspects of education through workshops, sharing my recipes on my blog, and consulting to bakeries, restaurants, and individuals.
Karen Bornarth is Executive Director of the Bread Bakers Guild of America, a nonprofit membership association dedicated to supporting the sustainable growth of the artisan baking industry through education, training and community. The Guild’s 2000+ members are bakery owners, professional bakers, ingredient and equipment suppliers, educators and others dedicated to the production of the highest-quality baked goods and to advancing the baking industry.
Through her years of experience as a bread baker and educator in New York City’s culinary landscape, Karen brings a passion for education and advocacy for frontline food production workers. She is particularly interested in breaking down the systemic and structural barriers to career and economic advancement for people of color and women in the culinary industry.
In her current work with the Bread Bakers Guild of America, she supports bakery owners and professional bakers to achieve success in their baking practices and businesses through classes and events in baking techniques and the business of baking, and opportunities to connect with and learn from their peers.
During her 7+ years with Hot Bread Kitchen, a nonprofit workforce and small business development agency in NYC, she developed an initiative to improve job quality and business performance in small food businesses, and oversaw a team to design and deliver a dynamic workforce development program in New York City.
She launched her career at Amy’s Bread as an overnight production baker, taught bread baking for several years at the French Culinary Institute, and developed products and processes for Le Pain Quotidien, an international franchise of bakery-cafes.
A jewelry designer and graduate gemologist from GIA London, Hena Arora Mahajan stumbled into the caking world in 2014 when she decided to bake her son’s 2nd birthday cake. Funky Batter was born in 2015 as a creative outlet for her with cakes as her canvas.
Hena is a Recipe Developer and works hard to shatter traditional boundaries by creating easy to make and functional recipes. Her main focus is to address pain points in the industry and simplify baking and cake decorating with her recipes and tutorials. She has created her famous #FunkyBattercream and #funkybattercake recipes which are being used by bakers in 102 countries.
She puts her heart and soul into each creation trying to bake the world happy, one cake at a time.
Alexandria started Finespun Cakes as a luxury cake business back in 2015, renting out odd catering kitchens and making sugar flowers at her kitchen counter.
Since then, she’s opened a cake studio in Toronto, had over 600 students go through her online courses, and grown her social media following to over 200k fellow cake makers and appreciators.
She’s been featured in wedding and cake magazines, blogs, podcasts, and was one of Wedluxe’s top 10 Wedding Cake Designers for 2023.
Alexandria has a love of creating sugar flowers, piped cakes, and helping other cake decorators navigate their own creative journeys and businesses.
Brette is a home-based wedding cake designer and baker out to prove that success in business is not about luck, but about solid business strategy, active implementation of those strategies, and holding a positive mindset. She runs not just one, but two baking businesses and enjoys creating beautiful floral painting wedding cakes as her signature style. She has been featured by Wilton, American Cake Decorating Magazine, and Cake Masters. As a coach for other bakers, Brette powerfully teaches all the nitty-gritty know-how about money and pricing, marketing, business planning, and how to confidently run your business without letting it run you. She hosts the podcast Business Is Sweet and it’s like a mini coaching session in your own kitchen! Brette lives with her husband and two cutie boys in Utah, and when she’s not making cake or teaching, she writes, goes for runs, gets lectured on Star Wars canon by her husband, and plays Taylor Swift songs on the guitar as loud as she can.
Erika is the creator and recipe tester behind The Pancake Princess, a baking blog curating popular internet recipes via monthly bake offs. The bake offs, which have been running since 2017, include testing 9-12 different recipes in one day, gathering taster feedback and analyzing the data to find the crowd favorite. Based in New York City, Erika recently transitioned from a product marketing manager at a software company to a full-time content creator.
If you haven’t yet been mesmerized by Katelyn’s stunning desserts, uplifting kitchen dancing, or elegant wedding cakes, allow us to introduce her: Katelyn, known as Sweet Kate Bakery, lives up to the name – her sweet and fun personality shines through in every dessert she bakes.
Katelyn has been baking up a storm for over 10 years now. She started off baking for friends and family, and then couldn’t stop the orders from coming in!
From baking, to decorating, to on-site assembling of uniquely designed, (often) sky high wedding cakes, everything she does draws you in for a closer look, because everything she makes is as much a feast for the eyes as it is for your stomach!
Throughout everything she creates, she strives to bake up success in cake, business, and a happier day for all those that come across her content.
Natasha works full time as a local government officer and has been running her own baking business alongside full time work since 2009.
After having baked for 10 years with what transpired to be a profitless business, she almost quit! She could make life-like novelty cakes but had no idea how to run a business. Natasha made it her mission to learn how to make her business profitable and, in doing so, she was able to turn it around and create her dream business. Now she supports other baking business owners in doing the same.
N.O. Cakes R Better is now a global six figure business helping thousands of business owners all over the world to turn their businesses around!
In two years, Natasha became an author, podcaster, speaker, YouTuber, and mentor with several transformational testimonials from a global audience to back up the evidence of her success. She is super excited and proud to have founded The Bake-ulator app, a cake pricing app to help bakers accurately cost the price of their cakes and send a quote to customers in seconds!
When she’s not baking or coaching, you’ll find Natasha trying to learn trending TikTok dances – much to the immense embarrassment of her husband of 20 years (Adonye) and teen and pre-teen children (Ayana, 16, Adonye, 14, and Joshua, 12)! They haven’t quite accepted that this is an absolutely legitimate and very cool thing to do!
Dee is the author of the book Baking Science and the voice and creator behind the sweet baking blog, “One Sarcastic Baker.”
With more than a decade of learning and exploring the fascinating world of baking science, including hands-on experience at a retail bakery as a baker/cake decorator, Dee is now sharing how baking works and how we can use it to elevate our baking skills.
Janelle is the founder of the award winning bakery The Cake Mamas, located in the Los Angeles area! In 2009, after being laid off from a failed company, she traded in her corporate job to give entrepreneurship a try and alongside her husband’s EX, Fabiola Gomez, The Cake Mamas was born. Eventually the pair outgrew their home based business, then opened their first retail specialty bakery, and went on to win Cupcake Wars on Food Network. The pair ended their partnership within the first year of opening, and Janelle continued to manage and grow the brand with 15 employees. She continued to appear on several Food Network shows which she won a bunch, and lost a bunch too!
After 12 years in the food and baking industry she hung up her apron, sold her shop and now leads a tribe of thousands of creators, treat makers and business owners from around the world who are looking for knowledge on how to start, build and grow profitable businesses they love. Through her business courses, she shows business owners how to create a business that generates real, sustainable profit so that you can stop working yourself to death and start getting back to why you started your business in the first place. She coaches and teaches, specifically on Branding, Marketing, Pricing and most importantly developing CONFIDENCE in SALES.
Along with her courses, Janelle is the co-host of the PUSH Podcast alongside her husband Eddie and hosts entrepreneurial retreats in different cities across the U.S. throughout the year. She also has a Facebook community dedicated to fostering business growth and success.
While she’s not coaching, you can believe Janelle will be doing anything involving her five favorite F words: Faith, Family, Fitness, Food and Founder!
Anthony is the chef & founder of Pastreez, a French bakery where you can buy macarons online.
Besides being a French chef from Le Cordon Bleu Paris, he is also a Search Engine Optimization expert (SEO).
When he left everything in Paris to build Pastreez in California in 2017, SEO was his top priority to get the word out. Within the first 6 months of operating Pastreez, the company grew to be the #1 ranked website for keywords like “macarons near me”, “macaron delivery”, and more.
He was featured in Semrush, the #1 SEO platform, who flew to California to interview him and share his SEO success story.
While SEO usually sounds complicated, Anthony loves popularizing the world of Google to help fellow bakers thrive online!
Eboni “Ebi Cakes” Sims is a super creative fondant fanatic! She started making fondant birthday cakes for her daughters when they were younger. After sharing her cake pictures on social media, surprisingly people began to inquire about ordering. At that point, Eboni turned her passion into a career.
Eboni specializes in decorative fondant cakes and sweets. Many of her edible creations have been featured on well-known cake decorating social media accounts. She began teaching online classes and has reached students in the UK, Jamaica, and Ghana. She enjoys teaching from beginning to advanced fondant levels, and her passion can be seen through many of her edible art designs she has created and shared with the world over the years.
Chef Joshua Cain’s passion for chocolate and pastry creation have led him to be a distinguished chef and leader across the hospitality industry. Now acting as Executive Pastry Chef at Caribe Royale Orlando, he leads pastry innovation with a special focus on chocolate artistry. His passion for creating dramatic creations out of chocolate continues to grow, and he’s gained notoriety while creating chocolate masterpieces including an eleven-foot Saturn V Rocket to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1969 moon landing.
Cain has received national recognition for his artistry in sugar work, winning 1st place in the 2010 Sugar Art Casting Challenge and a Competitors Choice Award in the 2012 Pastry Live Showpiece Competition. His chocolate creations have become well-known by the culinary community, including his 32-foot chocolate train using 1,600 pounds of chocolate and Santa’s Magical Flight featuring Santa in his sleigh and his reindeer, all made completely out of chocolate. Most recently, you can see Chef Josh on Food Network as a baker on the 2023 Spring Baking Championship.
The Bake Fest is for everyone with a love for baking:
We couldn’t find any other baking event like this, so we created one! It’s the best place for all bakers to get ready for the holidays.
Bake along in expert-led hands-on baking classes that inspire and educate.
Grow your business and make more money with help from our experienced business instructors.
Meet and interact in real-time with the best baking and business brands.
Enter to win incredible prizes.
Join the fun entirely from the comfort of your own home!
The Bake Fest 2023 marks our fourth virtual event that celebrates all bakers – home bakers, pastry chefs and bakery owners, recipe developers, and baking influencers. Our virtual gatherings are a place for us all to learn through interactive classes, networking opportunities, and shopping experiences. It’s a space to get to know each other and exchange tips so we can grow together.
