Tiny frogs peek out from the frosting. One cake is crowned with a miniature cake of its own. Others are finished with buttercream bows, vintage piping, and delicate ruffles.
While other kids were watching cartoons, Lindsay Strickland was watching HGTV. She loved The Carol Duvall Show, spent her allowance painting plaster figurines, and cooked her way through her mother’s Betty Crocker Cookbook, carefully marking favorite recipes with little paper tabs. The cookbook still sits on her shelf today.
Not every creative experiment ended well.
Once, while trying to make candles from old wax, Lindsay accidentally set the pot on fire while her mom was at the grocery store. She ran the pot under the faucet, which only made things worse because a dried eucalyptus swag hung above the kitchen window.
Fortunately, she just kept making things.
“I’ve always had my hands in something,” she says.
Before opening Buttersweet, her custom, made-from-scratch bakery, Lindsay sold hand-painted pillows through Etsy, made her own wedding cake, and baked for friends and family. Along the way, she discovered she could paint pet portraits with buttercream and even sculpt a three-dimensional cat’s face onto a cake.
“I was never great at sculpting,” she says. “But I guess buttercream is my medium.”
One of Lindsay’s favorite creations is a bold green floral cake finished with ruffles, dainty flowers, trailing drop strings, and tiny gold pearls. While chatting with strangers at a cocktail bar in New York, she showed them a photo.
“It looks like Victorian wallpaper,” one observed.
For Lindsay, who loves antiques and has often been described as “a bit of a maximalist,” it felt like one of the highest compliments she could receive.
Her flavor combinations are just as imaginative: bright lemon cake with strawberry filling and thyme frosting, Earl Grey cake with apricot, and peach Biscoff tucked between layers of vanilla cake and buttercream.
She finds inspiration in pastries, cocktails, herbs, teas, and her travels, often asking herself, “How could I turn that into a cake?”
“I want my cakes to make people feel joyful,” Lindsay says. “Even more than that, I hope seeing them encourages a sense of whimsy.”
That spirit has inspired cakes featuring dragons, Gary the Snail, pets wearing birthday hats, and even a princess-style jewelry box complete with toy rings for a woman in her 30s.
Children, Lindsay says, are impressed by different things than adults. They enjoy the wonder of a buttercream unicorn but aren’t surprised by it.
Adults, on the other hand, are often caught off guard by their own reactions.
“They’re usually much more excited,” Lindsay says. “Sometimes they’re even a little emotional.”
“A cake is a fleeting thing, so it’s the perfect opportunity to lean into playfulness as an adult.”
To see more of Lindsay’s latest creations, visit @buttersweetbham on Instagram.