It’s been a year since Lilian Chavira launched her dessert business, Gellocake, and she is celebrating her successes. Having invested $20,000 in putting a commercial kitchen in the basement of her Okemos home, she’s strived to remain flexible with her products.
“A year ago, it was just my friends who were my customers. Now I’m getting referrals,” she says.
Chavira’s prior experience as a graphic designer in the corporate world is apparent in the desserts she creates.
“I’m all about color,” the mother of two elementary-school-aged children says with enthusiasm.
Big sellers currently are children’s special event cakes, incorporating toys into tableaux: “Kids can eat the cake, then play with the toys,” she laughs.
In addition to custom cakes designed for almost any occasion, she makes fancied-up flan, the Mexican caramel-topped custard of her childhood. Chavira’s father was a chef and a general manager of hotels and prestigious restaurants in Mexico, and he and her mother owned bakeries.
“With my dessert business, I am able to keep my parents close through distance,” she says.
Various gelatins are on her menu as well, including those for corporate functions that match the colors of company logos. She can use sugar-free Jello, layered with evaporated milk in pineapple Jello, creating a dessert with few calories appropriate for people with diabetes, as well as those watching the scale in general.
Source: Lilian Chavira, Gellocake
Gretchen Cochran, Innovation & Jobs editor, may be reached here.
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