Tiffany Rosales is not one to shy away from a challenge. She taught herself to be a professional baker. She started a business when she had four young kids at home. And she built that business, Commonwealth Cake Company, with very little advertising. Instead, she credits her success to good relationships and the fact that, as she says, “I’ve done a really good job.”
You’ve got to love that confidence. Rosales has never been to culinary school; her first baking lessons came at her grandparents’ side when she was a child. “My grandfather was a chef in the Navy,” she says. “I was always in the kitchen watching and learning.” Beyond that, she says, “Everything I’ve learned has been trial and error, and a whole lot of passion.” Her cakes are showing up on an awful lot of #charlottesvillewedding posts lately. Browse them on Insta and you’ll find yourself wondering how the heck someone could make a cake look like an abstract painting, or what exactly is the secret of edible silver leaf.
Rosales got into baking cupcakes nine years ago, as a way to make some money at home and involve her children. “One day, one of my kids’ teachers asked me to make her wedding cake,” she remembers. It was an aha moment: a “romantic at heart,” Rosales found she loved being part of couples’ celebrations. (“I’d rather sit in my house and watch Hallmark movies all day long, even though I know what the outcome will be,” she says.)
With a background in art, Rosales realized a wedding cake was a much bigger canvas than a cupcake. “It gives me more space to tell a story,” she says. She always interviews clients about how they met and what sweet treats they love to share, then makes colored-pencil or digital drawings to show them what their dream dessert could look like. One couple brought her a pint of honey lemon lavender ice cream from their favorite date-night shop. “We sat there and tasted, which was a first for me,” Rosales says. “I was able to turn that into their wedding cake flavor.”
Caterers and planners send a lot of couples Rosales’ way—but so do other bakers. “I’ve been fortunate enough to make friends with Anita [Gupta, of Maliha Creations], Rachel [Willis, of Cakes by Rachel], Paris [Levinovitz, of Passionflower Cakes], and Kathy [Watkins, of Favorite Cakes],” she says, referring to other local cake mavens. “If they’re booked, they send business my way.” That’s a small-town vibe, for sure. “I have friends that do cakes in bigger cities, and they don’t have that same camaraderie,” she says.
This year, she tested her chutzpah again when, after a year of baking small cakes for downsized pandemic weddings, she made her first-ever five-tier wedding cake. “Once you start stacking three or four tiers, it’s very heavy,” she says, explaining that a cake that tall needs to be supported by dowel rods.
“I stressed,” she confesses. “But when I got to the venue and set it up, it was perfect.”