Beach couple finds success can be a piece of cake

By Krys Stefansky
The Virginian-Pilot

VIRGINIA BEACH

It's Friday night at the Shockley home. The KitchenAid mixer is quiet. The gas oven has cooled. Bags of flour sit tidily again on the shelves. Confectioner's sugar dust is swept away.

This week there are four finished cakes: a Redskins football helmet, a purse cake a la Juicy Couture, a towering pink and white mock-up of a wedding cake, and a two-tier party cake topped with a festive spray of sugar stars.

Three little girls wander in and out for hugs, snacks and turns at the computer while their parents, Jennifer and Tim, enjoy the end of another good week.

The young couple's 2-year-old business - Shockley's Sweet Shoppe - is letting them live their dream.

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Tracing the Shockley s' path means going back to 1993 when Jennifer, then a 16-year-old sophomore at Princess Anne High School, visited her sister at the bike shop where Tim Shockley was working.

"I just walked in, and that was the beginning," she said. Tim, then 17 and a senior at Cox High School, noticed the girl with the quick, shy smile, and before long, the two became a steady couple.

When Jennifer graduated in 1996, she joined the Air Force and was sent to Wichita, Kan.

"I followed her," Tim said. "I drove 24 hours with a packed truck."

They married, and the Shockleys built a family. They had Chloe. Then Skyla. The Air Force moved them to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina; Summer was born at the naval hospital in Portsmouth.

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Tim was a stay-at-home dad for seven years, changing diapers, filling bottles and hauling kids to doctor's appointments as the couple dreamed of a business that would keep them home together, working side by side. Somewhere along the way, they realized they loved baking. Jennifer's mom had been a gourmet baker, and Tim's mom baked wedding cakes while he was growing up.

On a trip to Switzerland, they explored European sweet shops and got to thinking. Once they were back home, Tim made fudge. Jennifer whipped up cookies and pastries. Co-workers and friends became enthusiastic taste testers.

"But there just wasn't that 'Wow!' factor with pastries," he said.

In 2004, Jennifer left her job as an Air Force flight medic and became a government contractor. Tim left behind early jobs in retail and went into landscaping.

In the evenings they experimented, baking and selling party cakes - cars, shoes, beer bottles, poker tables - until midnight. Their customers were delighted.

"They'd give us $50, and we'd give them back these huge cakes," Tim said, laughing.

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By 2007 the Shockleys were officially in business, getting orders through word of mouth: 19 wedding cakes the first year, 36 the second. This year they already had 30 wedding cakes booked by early February. Tim is the baker and cake engineer. Jennifer, whose art experience traces back to school years at Old Donation Center in Virginia Beach, is the cake decorator.

"I couldn't pipe a design to save my life," Tim joked.

Sales grew so much that, last summer, Jennifer quit her job. She started a blog and a Facebook page for the business and put herself in charge of e-mails and phone calls. They were named preferred vendors at the Chrysler Museum of Art and at The Hermitage Foundation in Norfolk. In January, WeddingWire named the business one of the best wedding cake vendors in their electronic network. They have appeared twice in VOW Bride magazine.

Producing three to four elaborate cakes per week now is a pace they enjoy.

"I tease Tim that I'm the only baker around with a top secret clearance," Jennifer said.

Some cake deliveries do seem like undercover work. On Christmas Eve they handed off a cake to a customer who found them online, ordered a purse cake for her own birthday and arrived in Norfolk from New York on a bus to pick it up.

"She met us at midnight and rode the bus right back home," Tim said. "She was so happy."

With five people for whom to provide health insurance, Jennifer decided to join the Air Force Reserves. Drilling one weekend a month leaves her free to be a mom, run the household and the business, and bake with her husband when he gets home from work. She is also just a few hours short of a bachelor's degree in psychology - something that gives her insight in dealing with customers, she said.

"I probably should've gotten into the mental health field," Jennifer said, "but it's funny: Cakes really do make people happy."

The Shockleys' business week begins Tuesdays with planning sessions. Wednesdays and Thursdays are for baking. Fridays are for decorating. They make their own icing and fondant. Nothing is frozen. All cakes are baked and delivered fresh. In addition to wedding cakes, they do birthdays, anniversaries, groom's cakes and cupcakes. They take three weddings per weekend. That's it - and that's enough.

"Deliveries are crazy when you have three or four cakes in the back of the car," Tim said. "You feel every bump in the road."

Brides first visit them for a tasting and discussion of cake style. Right now, round or square stacked cakes are modern. Pillars, staircases and water features are pass é, and customization is in. The Shockleys offer 35 flavors, using a light, moist sponge cake recipe. Lately, they're also filling requests for gluten-free cakes.

Eager brides arrive with themes in mind and magazine pictures of elaborate cakes, savvy about current trends they've studied on TV or admired at lavish affairs. They want icing piped on to match the lace on their dresses, sugar flowers to echo their bouquets, painted "henna" designs for an exotic look.

"The more personal you are with them," Jennifer said, "the easier it is." If "extreme decorating" is too pricey, she gently introduces more economical designs, like Swiss dots on fondant.

"Yeah," agreed her husband, " just letting them know that we're here for them and we're not here to push them out the door with a gargantuan cake."

The Shockleys remember what was important on their own special day.

Back in Kansas in 1997, four people were at their wedding. A lady they hired out of the phone book helped them tie the knot, a friend stood as witness, and then there was Jennifer and Tim.

Cake would wait.

Krys Stefansky, (757) 446-2043, krys.stefansky@pilotonline.com