We met Jessica this past April at CottageFoodieCon in Minnesota, and we immediately hit it off, excited about both of us being from the Bay Area. We chatted throughout the conference, swapping stories and trading notes on the cottage food world. I was inspired and I knew I wanted to share her story on the Home Food Central Blog.
Jessica said she has always been someone who likes to do things herself, especially when it comes to planning parties. Whether it’s the cake, the decorations, or the details most people would happily outsource, she’d rather be behind the scenes making it happen with her own hands. That DIY spirit showed up early, she was crafty from a young age, but it was in high school that baking first became something more than a hobby.
The spark came from her familial baking passion. Growing up, Jessica had beautiful memories of her family’s tiered spreads of desserts and cookies during the holidays, and one day she asked if she could try making something herself. Her mom handed over a recipe, and just like that, Jessica baked her first batch of M&M cookies. It didn’t go perfectly… she left out the salt, not yet understanding that baking is a science rather than an art you can freestyle, but the baking soda reaction she witnessed that day stuck with her. She was hooked.
Cupcakes, a Cause, and a Calling
Jessica’s first real hint that her baking could mean something to others came through her early career working with children with autism.
One of her tasks involved helping with a fundraiser bake sale, and she used the opportunity to make super creative, alligator-themed cupcakes. The reaction was immediate!
“You should sell these!” people told her.
That was 2005. Cottage Food laws were limited at the time, creating a legitimate small business felt out of reach, but Jessica kept baking for family, friends, baby showers, bridal showers, and years’ worth of birthdays. She was genuinely grateful that the people in her life wanted to pay her, even if she wasn’t charging much.
Laughing, she said for a three-tiered, detailed circus cake with delivery, she would charge $100. She wasn’t in it for the money. “I just wanted to do what I enjoyed,” she’d say.
For a time, she also taught cake decorating classes at Michaels part-time, which brought her another kind of joy, she loved teaching. But working a full-time job while going to school part-time AND baking on the side eventually wore her out.
Learning the Craft Professionally
A turning point came when a connection through her husband led to a trial shift doing desserts at a bakery on weekends. It was overwhelming at first, even though she enjoyed the decorating, she felt completely lost navigating the freezers, the volume, and the pace. She walked away wondering if the professional bakery world was for her. But she did not give up on it.
When she heard about a new local bakery opening up, she walked in with photos of her work and a pitch built entirely on honesty and enthusiasm: “I don’t have much experience, but I’m excited to learn.” They gave her the job. While baking at home, it would take Jessica two days to make an eight-inch cake, but at the bakery, she was developing skills in bulk-prepping and cooling time-management, making her more efficient.
After she and her husband moved from Modesto to the Bay Area around 2013, Jessica landed a position at the bakery inside Whole Foods. It turned out to be one of the most formative experiences of her baking life. She developed serious mass production skills like baking, decorating, and storing at scale, and learned the fundamentals of food safety that would serve her well for years to come.
The move had cost her something, though: her customer base. Without an established community in a new city, her side baking slowed considerably. Gradually, through co-workers and a transfer to a local Michaels, she started to rebuild. Friends were made, word spread, and orders started coming in again. ]
During this period, Jessica also began volunteering with Icing Smiles, a program that provides custom cakes to families with ill children. It didn’t require a license, and it gave her room to bake elaborately and joyfully for a cause that mattered. It was exactly the kind of baking she loved most.
When her first child was born in 2016, her creative drive surged. Maternity leave gave her time and space to create. Planning parties and making cakes for baby showers and first birthdays lit her up all over again.
The Cookie Class That Changed Everything
In 2019, Jessica took a local cookie decorating class from a baker who would go on to become a close friend and mentor: Lisa, of Borderlands Bakery, known from the Food Network. Jessica hadn’t done much cookie decorating in years, but the class reignited something. She saw in it a real pathway into the cottage food world: cookies were easier to sell, with fewer concerns around fillings and refrigeration, and she was ready to take the leap.
It was Lisa who pushed her over the edge. “What’s the worst that can happen?” she told Jessica. That was all it took.
In 2019, Jessica officially launched Toadily Baked Desserts — formerly operating informally under the name “All You Need Is Cake”, and began building her cottage food business in earnest.
The Pandemic and a Full-Time Business
When the pandemic hit in 2020, something unexpected happened: small businesses like Jessica’s saw a surge of support. Orders increased. People wanted to connect, to celebrate, to send something sweet. Through all of it, Jessica was working full-time as a product specialist at Whole Foods, managing the buying for bakery and prepared foods, while also pregnant with her second child and raising a four-year-old. She was, by her own account, exhausted.
After her second child was born in early 2021, maternity leave gave her space to breathe and bake. Orders poured in more than ever. Then came the moment that made everything click: a 350-cookie order with one week’s notice.
She saw her opportunity and said yes. She managed to fulfill the order, and when it was done, she knew.
“This is what I could be doing, if I wasn’t working full time.”
Jessica decided to leave Whole Foods in July, 2021 and has been running Toadily Baked Desserts as her full-time career ever since!
Finding Balance and Looking Forward
Since going full-time, Jessica’s path has included some rebuilding, another move about 40 minutes away shifted her customer base again, and the post-pandemic economy brought its own challenges. But she’s also found a kind of balance she didn’t have before.
She now works in the team at My Custom Bakes, an order management system for the baking community that she began supporting as a tester before eventually joining officially. The connection came through Lisa, and Jessica embraced it wholeheartedly, answering questions in the Facebook group, attending meetings, offering real feedback. It’s another expression of something central to who she is: a desire to give back.
Working with My Custom Bakes has allowed her to be more intentional about the orders she takes through Toadily Baked Desserts, declining copyright-infringing requests, stepping back from high-stress situations, and prioritizing her health alongside her craft.
What she’s most looking forward to is more wedding work. There’s something about a beautiful tiered cake in a venue, the scale, the setting, the meaning, that brings Jessica a particular kind of satisfaction. She’s already built the kinds of relationships where she makes the cake for the wedding and then, years later, for the baby shower too.
From a salt-less batch of M&M cookies to a full-time cottage food business, Jessica’s journey has always been about learning as you go, pushing yourself to do what you love, and doing it well.
Home Food Central
Stories like Jessica’s are exactly why Home Food Central exists. We believe in the talent, creativity, and resilience of home chefs and cottage food operators — and we know that the path isn’t always a straight line. Life moves you to new cities, your customer base shifts, and what worked in one chapter doesn’t always carry into the next. Our platform is built to help home food entrepreneurs find new customers no matter where they are in that journey — whether they’re just starting out, rebuilding after a move, or scaling up to something they never thought possible. If Jessica’s story lit something up for you, we hope you’ll let us be part of what comes next.
