Oakville Moms are Taking the Cake— With Icing

Six years ago, when Amy Nielsen and Beth Kullmann first met, their only connection was that they each had daughters of the same age in the same Oakville schools.

Kullmann, 46, was in the mortgage underwriting business. By day, Nielsen, 36, worked as a histology technician, cutting tissue at an area hospital. At every other spare moment, she was a baker.

Their daughters had become friends, so the ladies naturally began spending time together.

Never could they have imagined their friendship would lead to what they both hope will become a St. Louis favorite.

On Sept. 2, the ladies opened the Icing Café; an Oakville bakery capitalizing on the current cupcake craze.

“I was working a job where I had to get up at 3:30 in the morning,” Nielsen said. “And then I had to drive 45 minutes.” Cooking in the back of her mind was the idea of opening her own cake shop. 

"I’ve been baking for 12 years or so, just out of my house for family and friends. I thought maybe in three years, or so, I was going to do it," she said. 

For Kullmann, a cake shop was just the “something different” she was looking for.

“I was working for a local company and they were going to do some layoffs,” she said. “I held up my hand and said I want to be first. I had just had enough. I said to my husband, ‘I have to do something else; whatever it is.’”

Kullmann suggested they actually take the plunge.

“I know the business side of it. I’ll handle that,” she told Nielsen. “You bake.”

This was last spring. By this past June, they had signed a lease at 5688 Telegraph Road in the Dierberg’s Shopping Plaza in Oakville, setting in motion a new South County cupcake empire.

Determined not to take out a business loan, they promptly began scouring garage sales and Craigslist for useful cupcake shop items.

They nabbed a display case for free, which they repurposed into the cupcake counter.

“It wasn’t cheap, but we did a lot of the work ourselves,” Kullmann said. “We did a lot of bargain hunting. Most of our equipment, we bought used from a school that was closing. We each had a limited amount of money. We were just resourceful.”

So what was recently thought of as a distant dream or a just the notion of something different, has quickly become a reality.

Nielsen and Kullmann promoted their new adventure wisely. They took samples to area businesses. They started a blog and tracked their progress.  They made use of social networking by creating a presence on Facebook and Twitter.

“We even put our logo and web address on our cars,” Nielsen said. “We’ve had people come in and say they saw it and decided to look us up. So all the little things helped.”

In fact, word of the Icing Café traveled so effectively that their grand opening surpassed their wildest expectations.

“We were only open for four hours on our first day,” Nielsen said. “We ran out of cupcakes almost in the first hour.”

In just the week that Icing Café has been open, they are already building a regular clientele.

“There is this little old couple who has come in every day and had a cupcake and coffee,” Kullmann said.

For Nielsen, adjusting from party cook to baker has proven to be a bit of a challenge.

“When you go to a family party, you might have 20 or 40 people,” she said. “But this is like constant baking all day. Getting used to that (larger volume) is kind of hard to judge.”

For Kullmann, learning to bake to the standards of her partner took some effort.

“I would watch her (bake). I practiced... and then I passed the cupcake test,” she said.

"I’d make her ice and then I’d look at it and be like, ‘Nope, that’s not it,’ until she could do it close to like I do,” Nielsen said.

The ladies appear to be cooking up something good.

“We’re just not ones to give in,” Nielsen said. “So far, we like each other, still.”

In addition to the daily single serving menu, Nielsen and Kullmann also specialize in custom orders for special events like weddings, graduations and birthdays. They can make any of their cupcake recipes into a full size cake order. They also make cheesecake.

For now, they are looking forward to the upcoming holiday season to help solidify their South County presence.  

“It’s nice that it’s our own thing. From the start, we wanted to be a small batch bakery,” Kullmann said. “We’re not trying to compete with Jilly’s or The Cup.”

It’s just important to them to do what they love.

“I have worked 12 to 14 hour days since before we opened and I still smile at the end of every day when I go home,” Nielsen said.