For eight years, Aisha Wilson put her college degree to work as a test server engineer for IBM.
But a wedding gift and a move to Huntsville about 14 years ago eventually led her down another career path.
Wilson is the founder and owner of A. Wilson Cakes, the home-based Rocket City baking studio that specializes in designing and creating stunning, towering wedding cakes that are almost too pretty to eat.
The evolution from computer engineer to cake baker makes perfect sense for Wilson.
“The engineering side of my brain likes numbers, likes precise measurements, likes things to definitely be in order,” she says. “And it likes doing research.
“So, I take all of those different aspects of my engineering (background), and I put them into (making) cakes.
“I like to be precise in the number of grams that I put in each pan to make sure that they are exactly the same,” she adds. “And when I’m decorating, I like for my lines to be very clean and the same width and the same length.”
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Aisha Wilson started her in-home cake studio A. Wilson Cakes in 2016.(Photo by Joel and Amber Photography; used with permission)
‘My introduction to the baking world’
A Texas native who grew up in Houston, Aisha attended Prairie View A&M University, where she met her future husband, Sean Wilson, from Jackson, Miss.
“Well, he was an electrical engineering major, and I was a computer science major, but there were some classes, engineering classes, that overlapped,” she recalls. “So, we took a few classes together and started hanging out and, like I say, the rest was history.”
She moved to Tucson, Ariz., to go to work for IBM after she graduated in 2001, and Sean followed her there the next year. They got married in 2003.
At her bridal shower, she received the 573-page “The Best Recipe” cookbook as a wedding gift.
“It’s like a really thick cookbook, and I just remember taking it home and reading it like it was a novel,” Wilson says. “That was kind of my introduction to the baking world.”
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She became fascinated with the science of baking and began experimenting with some of the recipes -- especially the desserts.
“The first dessert recipe that I tried out of that book was for sugar cookies,” she recalls. “It was just a really simple sugar cookie, but it was probably the best sugar cookie I’ve ever had -- even to this day.
“That kind of opened the door to me trying other recipes like cheesecakes and apple pies and pound cakes and, eventually, more elaborate cakes. But that (sugar cookie recipe) was the one that kind of sparked my interest in desserts and baking.”
This multi-tiered wedding cake is decorated with edible sugar flowers that baker Aisha Wilson made by hand.(Photo courtesy of A. Wilson Cakes; used with permission)
‘Word of mouth just kind of spread’
When the Wilsons started a family, Aisha left IBM for a different adventure that she likes to call “life engineering’' -– being a mother to her and her husband’s two boys, Noah and Caden.
In 2009, they moved from Tucson to Huntsville, where Sean started a new job.
Seven years later, after the boys were a little older, Aisha turned her passion for baking into a business when, working out of her kitchen in compliance with the Alabama Cottage Food Law, she started A. Wilson Cakes.
It was her birthday gift to herself.
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She put her computer programming skills to work designing and customizing a website and joined a group of wedding planners and professionals that got together to network on Tuesday nights.
At one of their gatherings, she met a wedding photographer who needed a cake for a photo shoot.
“She needed a cake, and I provided the cake for her,” Wilson says. “She took some really nice photographs, and from there, word of mouth just kind of spread.”
After she outgrew the family kitchen, she transformed a spare room into her “cake studio,” which is equipped with mixers and refrigerators and stocked with all her baking supplies.
“I have everything I need there,” she says. “I do my decorating in that cake studio. My photos that I take of my cakes I do in that studio. So, all of my hands-on work is done in that space.”
Aisha Wilson with her husband, Sean, and their sons, Caden, far left, and Noah, far right. (Photo by Gianna Snell Photography; used with permission)
‘A labor-intensive event’
Wedding cakes are about 95 percent of Wilson’s business, although she does make cakes for other special occasions, as well.
The process begins months in advance of the wedding day.
“Either the bride or the wedding planner contacts me through my website, and we talk about their colors and their vision for their wedding,” she says. “Then we figure out what type of design would work for their particular wedding.”
From there, Wilson creates a sketch of the cake on her computer for final approval.
“Then the week of the wedding is pretty much full steam ahead,” she says.
Her wedding cakes are multi-tiered marvels that -- from baking and decorating to assembly and delivery -– can take up to 30 hours to complete.
“It’s s a full week,” she says. “It’s definitely a labor-intensive event.”
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Wilson also makes “cake tasting gift boxes” with a sampling of flavors -- vanilla, lemon, carrot, red velvet and chocolate -- and a variety of different buttercreams for customers who just want to try a few slices and not buy the whole cake.
“That is an opportunity for future clients to sample the work or for whoever just loves cake like I do,” she says.
When she’s not making cakes for her customers, Wilson loves testing out new desserts on her husband and their two sons, who are now 15 and 12.
“We’re all foodies, and we like experimenting with different cuisines,” she says. “Ironically, because we do like sampling different desserts, if I’m making dessert, it’s not always cake.”
A. Wilson Cakes is a home-based cake studio in Huntsville, Ala. For more information, go here.
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