Well, hey there, and welcome to my kitchen.

I'm Dixie Holt, and I live in Anderson, South Carolina. For thirty years I was a teller at the savings and loan downtown, and I retired in 1997, which means I now have all day to do what I used to do at night, which is make cakes.

I took a cake decorating class at night at the technical college in 1971, mostly because my sister-in-law signed us both up and I didn't want to hurt her feelings. She quit after three weeks. I never did. Since then I've made cakes for family, for church, and for anybody who asks me nicely, and I charge what the ingredients cost plus a little something for my trouble. My husband Paul is my delivery man and my taste-tester, and he takes both jobs very seriously. He drives the station wagon with the cake on a towel on the back floor and he does not go one mile over forty. He has never once dropped a cake. He has once eaten a corner off one, but that's another story.

Last Christmas my nephew Clyde gave me a digital camera that saves the pictures right onto a floppy disk, so this is the first year I have a picture of every cake. Before that I had to tell people about them, and you know how that goes. So here they are. Click on a little picture to see it bigger.

My 1999 Cakes

Ethan's Tractor · Saturday, March 20 Little Ethan from church turned four, and all that boy wants in this world is a tractor. Two 9 by 13 cakes, stacked and carved with a serrated knife, with a little loaf cake on top for the seat part. The whole thing is covered in tiny green stars with a star tip, which takes about two hours and a lot of patience. The wheels are round cakes iced in chocolate with the tread lines drawn in with a toothpick. The smokestack is black licorice. Dirt is crushed-up chocolate sandwich cookies. He wouldn't let them cut it until he'd driven it around the table.

Stacy & Luis's Wedding Cake · Saturday, May 22 Stacy Khoury and Luis Scott were married at our church, and the reception was in the fellowship hall. Three tiers, 14, 10 and 6 inches, white cake with white buttercream, with a bead border and lace scrollwork piped on the sides. The roses are gum paste. I made all two dozen of them three weeks ahead and let them dry in egg cartons on top of the refrigerator, where Paul was told not to touch them. Stacy wanted them to "fall down the side like they're spilling." So they spill. I think this is the prettiest cake I've made in ten years, and I'm not one to brag.

Luis's Groom's Cake · Saturday, May 22 Down here a wedding has a groom's cake too, usually chocolate, and it's supposed to be about something the groom loves. Luis loves Lake Hartwell more than is healthy, Stacy says, and he is out there every Saturday he can get. So: a bass. The lake is a chocolate sheet cake swirled with blue buttercream with white caps on the waves, and mud and grass around the edges. The fish is carved from pound cake, which holds its shape, and painted with food coloring and a little brush. The cattails are on florist wire. I put a little red-and-white lure in his mouth because Luis's daddy said a bass is no good without a lure in his mouth. Luis cried. A grown man. Over a cake.

Naomi & Mary's Castle · Saturday, August 14 Twins! Naomi and Mary turned six, and they both wanted to be princesses and neither one would share a castle, so I told them it was a castle with two sides. Six candles in the back row for Naomi, six in the front row for Mary. The castle is a square cake, two layers, iced pale pink with the stones drawn in white. Each tower is two sugar ice-cream cones, both turned upside down, one stacked on the other, with pink icing at the seam rolled in pink sugar. The drawbridge is a chocolate candy bar on licorice chains, over a moat of blue icing. Little pink flags on toothpicks. The towers are the first thing to go at a party, every time.

And Here's Me · Thursday, September 23 Paul took this one for the page, so you can see how I pipe a rose. That is NOT icing on my nose, it's the flash. (It was icing.) See how I do the roses >>

Cake Disasters

Anybody who tells you they've never had a cake go wrong has never made a cake. Here are a few of mine.

The Leaning Cake of July 10. Kellie Lerner and Roberto Carpenter got married on a Saturday in July, with the reception outdoors under a tent. It was 97 degrees in the shade, and the tent was not the shade. I'd made the buttercream with all shortening for the heat, like I always do in summer, but about forty minutes after we set it up, Paul came and found me and said, "Dixie, I believe it's leaning." It was leaning. The middle tier had gone soft and the top one was sliding toward the punch bowl. We put in two more dowels right there, got it back up straight, and I turned the bad side toward the tent pole and covered the worst of it with extra roses. Nobody noticed but the bride's mother, and the bride's mother was very sweet about it. I have not done an outdoor wedding cake in July since, and I won't.

The Dog. 1986. A birthday cake on the counter. We had a beagle named Biscuit. I'll let you finish that one yourself.

The Blue Icing. Early on, I made a baby shower cake with blue icing, and everyone who ate it had blue teeth and blue lips for the rest of the afternoon, including the preacher. Go easy on the dark colors. A little paste color goes a long way.

The Humidity. South Carolina in August will ruin a gum paste rose if you don't keep it in the air conditioning. Ask me how I know.

My Rules

• I don't pipe writing on a cake unless you beg. My writing slants uphill, always has, and a cake should be pretty from every side. If you want "Happy Birthday," we can put it on a little card next to it. If you beg, I'll do it, but I'll make a face.
• Order two weeks ahead, and a month for weddings. Gum paste roses don't make themselves.
• I charge for the ingredients plus a little. I'm not a bakery and I don't want to be one. If you want to pay me more, put it in the plate at church.
• Paul delivers within 30 miles. Past that, you come get it, and you hold it on your lap.
• Keep it cool. Buttercream is mostly fat and sugar, and it will melt if you leave it in a hot car.

My buttercream recipe, how I pipe a rose,
and how to stack a tiered cake >>