Communiversity at the University of Mississippi is offering a “D.I.Y.: Make Award-Winning Cake Designs” taught by Jeff Taylor and his wife Kathleen, owners of Sweet T’s Bakery and two-time winners of the Food Network’s “Cake Wars.”
The class will be from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday at the UM Depot and is open to anyone in the Oxford community.
“It is a good opportunity for us to give back to the community and be a part of the university,” Taylor said. “It’s something that people enjoy doing and something that we’re good at.”
The class will cover preparing and using buttercream icing, piping borders, leaves, roses and rosebuds.
“It’s going to be a full-range class,” Taylor said. “We’ll go from stacking, leveling and icing the cake, and then to some advanced fondant and modeling work.”
Taylor has decorated cakes for 10 years, and his wife has been creating them for the last 20 – ever since their son was born.
“I built cabinets and did woodworking for years,” Taylor said. “Until those shows like ‘Ace of Cakes’ and ‘CakeBoss’ started coming out and using power tools to build their cakes. That’s when I got interested.”
He and his wife have taught multiple cake-decorating courses through Communiversity in the past two years.
“We’ve done some basic decorating classes and holiday-themed classes where we do holiday cookies and cakes,” Taylor said. “We try to make it fun for everyone and make sure we aren’t boring anybody.”
The couple appeared on Food Network’s “Cake Wars” competition twice and brought home a win both times. In their first appearance on the show, the couple created a cake for Roald Dahl’s 100th birthday, and the winning cake was displayed at his birthday celebration.
They filmed the episode back in July, but it wasn’t aired until January. Taylor said it was an amazing experience, but coming back to Oxford was strange because they couldn’t talk about how it ended until the episode aired.
“We actually went and filmed the second episode before the first one even aired, which was weird,” Taylor said.
The Taylors hosted a watch party for their second episode, which aired last Sunday.
When they aren’t on ‘Cake Wars’ or teaching baking classes, the Taylors are at their storefront baking all kinds of sweet treats.
Sweet T’s Bakery has been open in Oxford for the past four years creating all cakes and goodies for anniversaries, tailgating, birthday cakes and more.
This article was submitted to The Daily Mississippian from an advanced reporting class.
