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Cake artist thrives on challenges
McCOOK, Neb. — For most people, making a cake means a mix, some frosting and maybe some candles. For specialty cake artist Kasha Messersmith of Omaha, Neb., formerly of McCook, Neb., it can mean dry ice, nuts and bolts, even flashing lights.
For her recent 10-year McCook High School reunion, she made a cake sculpted into the school mascot, a bison, with jaw-dropping, realistic details. Pictures of the cake caused a frenzy on social media, with so many comments and “shares” that she was frozen out of using her apps for a while.
“I couldn’t figure out what was going on,” she said.
The cake took 30 hours to make and started with a plywood base, she said, and then for the frame, small rods with nuts and bolts. The curly-headed bison was made out of modeling chocolate, similar in texture to modeling clay, along with buttercream frosting and for the horns, fondant, or edible icing. Inside, the cake was tinted red and white, the school’s colors, giving the look of red meat and marbling. Once completed, Messersmith said the bison looked pretty good pawing at the ground, then thought, ‘how can I get steam out of his nose?’
“I had a mad scientist moment,” she said, and using small tubing threaded up through one of the legs, “steam” from dry ice puffed out from his nostrils.
Figuring out challenges in a design is her favorite part about being a cake artist, Messersmith said. “I thrive on it,” she said. “I like to find different ways to do things, play around and push boundaries.”
So virtually nothing is off the table when it comes to a cake. A recent wedding cake order included the request for the couple’s dogs to be included in some way, so using a picture provided, Messersmith created two tiny golden retrievers, made out of frosting, poking their heads out from the bottom layer. Another order came from a woman who wanted a birthday cake for her husband and said he liked Starbucks, golfing, old movies and the L.A. Dodgers. Messersmith designed a three-dimensional cake with all of the requested elements: a strip of 35-millimeter film, draped over a Starbucks coffee cup with the Dodgers logo, set into a golf green next to a golf ball.
She said her first design was in high school when she brought Nike shoes made out of cake to an art club meeting. “At the time I thought it looked pretty good, but now looking back, it’s pretty rough,” she laughed. But it sparked something inside her and during college, she continued to work on cakes while pursuing her degree in graphic design. “I’d mess around with different cakes and watch how the professionals did them,” she said.
After graduating, she began spending more time on her cakes, making them for parties and get-togethers with friends. The reaction she got was encouraging and now, Messersmith takes orders off her Facebook page, Kasha’s Cakes. She also works part-time as a server as the flexible hours gives her more time for designing.
Her cakes run the gamut from traditional to wild, including those she’s made shaped like a police car with flashing lights, a pirate ship at sea wrapped in giant octopus arms, even realistic hot dogs and hamburgers cooking over a grill. She also does cupcakes and specials for holidays, like strawberries dipped in chocolate placed inside a milk chocolate high heel shoe.
After spending all those hours on the smallest of details, does she feel a twinge of regret when her work is cut up and eaten? Not at all, Messersmith said. “The joy and incredible reactions I see from people definitely makes it all worthwhile,” she said.
More of her cake designs can be found on Facebook at “Kasha’s Cakes,” where orders can also be placed. There’s a delivery fee for cakes ordered outside the Omaha area.