Baker Spotlight: Meet Kylie Holt

Behind the Sugar: Blog Edition

Today we are excited to share our interview with the talented Kylie Holt in Sunset, Utah who donated a cake for super sibling Lorelei.

“All you need is faith, trust, and a little pixie dust!” Sounds so simple, right? Most times in a child’s innocent eyes that is all you really need. The ability to see our mystical world peacefully even when faced with illness and loss is truly what makes kids so relentless, just like our super sibling Lorelei.

Lorelei’s sister Lily passed away last year. To honor her, she chose to have her birthday cake made to encompass everything mystical and magical and former Cake Wars competitor Kylie Holt kindly accepted her first Icing Smiles challenge! “I brainstormed ideas for the cake for weeks and weeks before I finally settled on a design. Lorelei specifically requested a cake that had something to do with fairies, but she left all of the rest of the details up to me. Her little sister Lily who had passed away just last year absolutely loved fairies, so that’s why she chose that theme. I knew I wanted to make some sort of fairy house or fairy garden, but it wasn’t until my sister-in-law Heather suggested a fairy treehouse that I decided on that final idea. Lorelei told me that Lily’s favorite color was orange, so I knew I also had to incorporate orange lilies somewhere on the cake as well. Because Lily loved Tinkerbell, I decided to include a sparkling silhouette of Tinkerbell too,” Kylie said.

So with the fairy treehouse theme in mind, Kylie started on what would be a long and tedious project that would take many hours to complete. Did I mention she was also expecting a baby! Kylie started with a basic structure that included a large threaded rod on a wooden base. She used a round piece of wood for the base of the fairy treehouse. This was secured in place by nuts screwed onto the metal rod. From the round piece of wood, she had several curved metal rods to use as support for the heavy fondant tree branches. Kylie then built up the trunk with layers of cake and carved it into a tree trunk shape. On top of that, she secured the round wooden peace with a nut and layered more cake on top to make the treehouse.

Lorelei specifically requested fruit filled cake flavors. With that in mind, Kylie baked a lemon cake as the tree trunk with raspberry filling and vanilla buttercream. It was then covered in fondant, textured and painted to look like real bark. The fairy treehouse was vanilla cake with raspberry filling and raspberry buttercream covered in wood-textured fondant painted with cornstarch and edible food coloring to get that amazing crackled paint effect. The pond was made out of poured isomalt (an edible sugar glass). The moss was crushed graham crackers colored with 2 different edible green dusts, and the dirt was crushed cream filled chocolate cookies. All of the other decorations including mushrooms, lilies, step-mushrooms, leaves, chimney, Tinkerbell, and sign were made out of fondant.

Kylie started decorating cakes about 5 years ago when her mom turned 50. She desired to make her a very special fondant birthday cake to celebrate this once in a lifetime occasion. She instantly got addicted and her cake passion took off! So much so, in the summer of 2016, she and her sister-in-law Heather Clarke appeared on the Food Network’s hit show Cake Wars: the Roald Dahl episode.

When we asked Kylie what made her interested in being a Sugar Angel for Icing Smiles she responded, “I feel very strongly that if a person is given a talent, they have the responsibility to use that talent to better the world around them. This is why I wanted to become a Sugar Angel and also why I am a member of the non-profit organization Birthday Cakes 4 Free, which provides cakes for kids in the Foster system and seniors at senior centers that don’t have family [members] close by. I love the opportunity I have with these organizations to bring happiness and joy to others in need by doing something that I am passionate about!”

For this to be Kylie’s first Icing Smiles experience she says, “… the experience was so incredibly rewarding! The very best part was seeing the joyous response of the family. Lorelei was so excited to see the cake and she kept thanking me over and over. The cake brought tears of joy to her mom’s face because of all of the little reminders of her sweet daughter Lily who passed away last year. I loved seeing that something I was so passionate about could make someone so happy!” She also mentioned that she could tell that eventhough the family has experienced a rough time, she could tell that their faith and positive attitudes helped them persevere. “Their strength and love inspired me,” she said.

Thank you Kylie for bringing a BIG smiles to Lorelei’s face! We are truly excited to have you as a Sugar Angel and look forward to seeing more “smiles” from you in the future!