Zero to a Million: One Cupcake at a Time
It was the Chocolate Turtle Poke Cake recipe that was a game changer for Forsyth’s Mom Loves Baking blogger Lise Ode. The photograph went viral, and was liked, shared and/or pinned millions of times on social media. How did it feel to get thousands of new Facebook followers and boost her blog page views to close to five hundred thousand with one post? SWEET.
Lise’s love affair for baking started early but she didn’t pursue it as a career until after working as a graphic designer for The National Inquirer and stewardess on a multi-million dollar yacht in the Caribbean. At thirty-two she went to Chicago to attend Wilton School of Cake Design and Confectionary Art.
She started her own cake business and became a finalist TWICE in the Pillsbury Bake-Off competition. Impressed by Lise's gift for making unique sugar art creations, from guitars to Rolex watches, her husband, Jay, suggested she start a blog. For the first year, she baked and blogged about every winning Pillsbury Bake-Off recipe. “Building a blog is like baking, it takes time,” Lise laughs as she recalls all of the effort of making fifty-two challenging recipes and only have nine followers to show for it.
The second year she caught a few breaks: two of her creations, the Copycat Nothing Bundt Velvet Cake and three tiered Jackson Pollock Pinata Cake went viral and The Today Show featured Lise’s Pumpkin Bars in their newsletter. With thousands of new followers, she gained site advertising and offers to do sponsored posts.
This year, Lise celebrated hitting over fifty thousand FaceBook followers. I asked her how many hours a day she works on her blog, “At least eight. And although it’s great working at home, there are many nights my family doesn’t have dinner, but there are always lots of cakes.”
Lise’s goals for the future include more appearances on morning shows to showcase her favorite holiday sweets, do media coverage for the Pillsbury Bake-Off and writing a cookbook. She just launched a new site, MomLovesBlogging.com where she will teach “mompreneurs” step-by-step how to start and make money from their own blog. Lise says she loves earning income for her family by blogging but the best part of having a baking blog is having a reason to make and eat desserts every day of the year!
You can find all of the recipes in this article on Lise’s blog, www.Momlovesbaking.com
Amy Lyle is the Author of The Amy Binegar-Kimmes-Lyle Book of Failures. She lives with her husband, four teenagers and one large dog.
