Whether it is for a birthday, anniversary or another occasion, Sierra Wade knows that the cake sets the tone for the celebration.
“I want to make that day as special as possible for them,” she says.
Wade, 20, is the baker and decorator behind
Skye’s Sweets, whose strawberry crunch cake went viral on Facebook last year. The Springfield native baked her first cake at age 12, started her business in high school and now counts it as her primary job, baking out of the kitchen of
All Seasons Restaurant and Catering.
Her inspiration in the kitchen came early, seeing her mom create her own cakes.
“I loved watching her do it, and I loved seeing people happy about it,” she says.
Wade started small as a 12-year-old, baking cookies, bars and other treats. The first cake she made, however, was “traumatizing” – it crumbled and broke.
She rebounded. After making a cake for her father’s birthday, she started fielding requests from others. Skye’s Sweets – called so after her middle name – was truly born when she created its Facebook page in 2015 as a high school student.
Some customers send Wade a picture of exactly the cake they want, while others send multiple to spark an idea. Still others don’t know at all how they want their cake to look, and Wade works with that, too.
Then it is off to the kitchen. The time it takes to create a cake varies based on the type and design but can take 8 to 10 hours from choosing the ingredients to the finished product. Wade uses no cake mixes and even makes her own extracts, like vanilla and lemon.
“Everything I do is homemade,” she says.
One of her favorites is her strawberry crunch cake, which she says got 5.4 million views on Facebook. The strawberry cake has a layer of cheesecake in the middle and is covered in homemade strawberry crunch, and topped with white chocolate drips, strawberries and Oreos.
“I got crazy orders for it,” she says. “Everyone was losing their minds over it.”
Another favorite was a Halloween-inspired skull cake, topped with 54 molded white chocolate skulls. It took seven bags of chocolate, she says.
While Wade primarily creates cakes, she also sells a variety of other baked goods, including cupcakes. Skye’s Sweets has also offered pies for Thanksgiving, cookie kits at Christmas, and a Valentine’s Day special that combines a dozen roses with a dozen chocolate-dipped strawberries.
Wade, who was born and grew up in Springfield, attended
Springfield High School for two years before graduating from
Springfield-Clark Career Technology Center in 2020, going through the culinary program. The program, she says, focuses more on cooking than baking, but she learned skills there that she carries with her today.
“It taught me how to move faster, especially in the kitchen,” she says.
Wade moved to Beavercreek last summer, but Skye’s Sweets’ base – and most of its customers – remains in Springfield. Clark County is where the business started and has thrived. It is also where she periodically holds pop-up events, advertised on her
Facebook page, for customers to purchase her sweets without pre-ordering.
“Everyone in Springfield has supported me,” she says.
Wade also is interested in eventually getting a food truck, introducing her desserts to an even wider audience.
Wade can’t explain why she gravitated toward cakes at such an early age, and it can be exhausting work. For one pop-up event last year, she baked non-stop for an entire day without sleep before offering up her goods. But she works hard to make her cakes everything her clients hope for.
“I felt like cakes were always what I was supposed to do,” she says.