Amy Cullifer started decorating cakes at 19, working part-time at a grocery store bakery. It wasn't the plan — art and interior design was always the original passion — but the job became something else entirely.
"This is my creative outlet," she said in discovery of that early job. "And then the passion for baking came with it."
She and her husband, Mike, later moved to Norman, where Cullifer was a stay-at-home mom. Word of mouth turned into a business almost by accident.
"I had mentioned I made cakes to some people in Norman. They said, well, make me a cake. And then it just kind of snowballed. Everybody was calling, wanting cakes. I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm just a mom at home, and it just grew organically."
I remember thinking, “Wow, people really want my cakes,” she said.
Amy Cakes became an official business through an LLC and a written business plan in 2005. She moved into her current Norman storefront in 2009. Since then, Amy has traveled through life with several families in the county.
The day of the interview, Amy completed an order from a customer that has celebrated practically every occasion in their life - baby showers, kids into teenager birthdays, weddings and funerals - all celebrated with Amy Cakes.
“This is why I do it,” she said.
The Team
Amy Cakes is a four-person operation: Cullifer, who does all the design work; a baker she's trained over the past 11 years; an office manager who handles orders and calls; and a cake designer who assists with sugar work. It is a well-oiled baking machine.
"I'm able to spend all my time in the kitchen creating," she said. Everyone works together on each order, including Amy’s judgment on each. "It's a team," she said. "If there's one person gone... it's kind of tricky, so we all have to work together to create each cake, for sure."
Cullifer estimates she averages around 300 wedding cakes a year, plus roughly 10 to 15 birthday cakes a week. Weddings are her favorite.
"I think, you know, it’s the most important day of someone's life" she said, describing her passion of celebratory moments and the creative process with brides and other customers. "By the time they get to me, I'm one of the last things that people plan in a wedding... it's fun to talk about all those elements and create a cake for someone."
She emphasized that sculptural, non-traditional cakes are a specialty- at the time of the interview she was working on a life-size deer cake with internal structural support. Past projects have included a nine-foot python cake and a hanging, chandelier-style cake.
Cakes aren't the only thing Amy Cakes makes, despite the very clear title. She is open to essentially any recipe as her priority is her place in baking something special for a meaningful, special day.
Trends She's Watching
Cullifer said cake styles shift every couple of years, largely driven by Instagram and Pinterest. More recently, smaller "cutting cakes" have become popular, often paired with dessert bars. The current trend, she said, is a detailed buttercream style called Lambeth piping, which happens to be close to what she originally trained in decades ago.
A Baker Who Isn't Big on Sweets
Cullifer said plainly that she doesn't eat much cake or icing herself. "I do not eat sweets," she said. "I do not like icing." She said she'll try new desserts when traveling — "research and development," in her words — but it isn't really a preference for sugar that drives her.
That devotion runs both ways. When her older son got married, he skipped the groom's cake — some may consider a given for an Amy Cakes kid. He didn't want his mother working the reception; he wanted her there as a guest. Cullifer, who says she rarely makes cakes for her own family anymore unless asked, doesn't need convincing that people notice the difference. Even after decades and hundreds of orders a year, some cakes matter more by not being made.
A Sweet Family
Cullifer and Mike have been married 29 years as of this past April. They have two sons, about a year apart in age — Dylan and Jake.
For her own wedding, she made her own cake. "It was just white. White with fresh flowers. Just simple," she said.
Cullifer named a few clients on the record: she made the wedding cake for country singer Parker McCollum, and said The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond, hired her for her daughter Alex's wedding and returned for a second family wedding after that.
Baking for the County
Cullifer described Norman as central to why she still loves the work. "I love Norman's sense of community," she said. "I feel like everybody's family." She and a handful of other local bakers — she estimated five or six — consider themselves a close-knit group who help each other out.
Sidebar Advice for First-Time Custom Cake Clients
Cullifer's advice for someone ordering a custom cake for the first time: call or stop by the shop, be ready to discuss budget, and book early. She said the shop is typically booked out a couple of months, and further out during busy wedding stretches. Tastings are part of the process, and quotes are given up front. Her passion and pride are obvious to anyone in her studio.
"I let them tell me what they're wanting," she said. "I'm willing to create anything."
Reflecting on the milestones she's been part of in the county — decades of weddings, birthdays, and a few celebrity orders along the way — Cullifer kept coming back to one word. "I feel extremely lucky," she said.