Meet Bryonna Williams | Cake Artist & Educator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Bryonna Williams and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Bryonna, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I needed a change & more money haha. I was working as an interior designer & I was miserable. I was crying almost everyday & on top of that I was only making about $1600/month. So I could barely pay my bills & was struggling bad. I baked a caramel apple cake Thanksgiving 2018 for my family & got so many compliments on it. I’ve always been a person to try everything & see what sticks, so after my family saying I should make more cakes, I spent the next 5 months baking every day when I could & having my parents as my taste-testers. I had no prior cake decorating experience & only ever baked chocolate chip cookies or box cake mixes, so this venture was literally a gift from God.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I do consider my cakes art so I love this question. What sets me apart first is the way I treat my customers. Everybody can learn how to bake & decorate a cake. But being kind & understanding is a bit harder to teach. My customers always comment on how easy my ordering process is & how great my customer service is.

When it comes to my actual cakes, I have a very simplistic, minimal design style. I don’t create cakes covered in fondant simply because it’s not my style & take pride in what I can create using buttercream & other decorative elements. Colorado i such a laid-back, easy-going state so the way I design cakes aligns perfectly with my customers. Think of white cakes with pops of color from beautiful florals, or semi-naked cakes where you can see parts of the cake layers peeking through the buttercream, or tall cakes with a beautiful floral stencil design to add texture & pattern.

Developing my style was not easy. I tried everything under the sun. Fondant cakes, Pound cakes, Mini cakes, Cheesecakes. It took trial & error for me to find the style & offerings that brought me the most joy & feeling confident in the fact that I cant be everything to everyone but the right customers will find & love me.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I dont get out much haha. Work, family & travel are my life. But when I do get out, finding the best food & being outdoors are 2 of my favorite things to do. Here’s a list, just to name a few:

Eat/Drink
-Barcelona
-Nanas Dim Sum & Dumplings
-Ques House
-Mister Oso & Senor Bear
-Luca
-Yardbird
-Ramble
-Stellas Cucina

Play:
-Puttshack
-Flight Club Denver
-Dairy Block for Thursday trivia night

Outdoor:
-walk down broadway & visit the shops
-Confluence park for people watching
-St. Marys Glacier
-Manitou Incline

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My parents & the internet. I know the parents is an easily explainable one because of their support when I was living in their home, using their kitchen every day & night, running their oven into the ground with all the baking I was doing, tasting every single recipe I made, & supporting me at every single market when I first started.

The internet is probably unexpected but I think a lot of people can understand where I’m coming from. I learned every single thing from google, youtube, pinterest & instagram. I watched other bakers over and over again to learn how they do what they do & try my best to replicate what I was seeing. I couldn’t afford to take classes or invest in a mentor because I used all my money to sign up for markets & what money I still had saved was paying my bills. So the internet was the only place I could rely on to teach me what I didn’t know. I had never run a business before so everything was brand new down to how to create my own business cards & print them.

Now that I’ve been in the game for a bit, I thank God everyday for the people I’ve met along the way, on & off the internet. Community is so important for growth & success & I’ve connected with some amazing people that I know I can always count on to support me & help me when I’m lost or confused.

Website: https://www.flickofthewhiskcakes.com

Instagram: @flickofthewhiskcakes

Image Credits
Mckenzie Bigliazzi