Vanilla, chocolate and red velvet are only a couple of the cakes that student cake decorator and baker, Laila Rahmy, makes for her student-run cake business.

Ever since she was little, Rahmy has loved decorating cakes. Her first time decorating one was in 2017, when one of her neighbors was having a cake-decorating workshop for the little kids who lived in her neighborhood.

At the workshop, Rahmy decorated multiple desserts, including cupcakes and cookies. She drenched her creations in icing and coated them with sprinkles shaped like white pearls and hearts. After this, Rahmy became obsessed with decorating

When Rahmy was 10, she and her siblings stayed in Egypt with their grandparents while her parents were house hunting in the US.

“It was my birthday at the time…And so my grandma let me make a cake. I made a unicorn cake, and the horn was an ice cream cone. It was really cute,” Rahmy said.

After she started decorating desserts, Rahmy continued her passion by learning from YouTube videos.

“I watched a lot of Rosanna Pansino…she really inspired me to [start] decorating cakes,” Rahmy said.

Another one of Rahmy’s inspirations was her grandma, since she shares Rahmy’s passion for cooking and baking.

As a baker, Rahmy has created multiple different cake designs, including a Mamma Mia-inspired cake, an

Açaí-inspired cake and even a Dubai Chocolate cheesecake. Rahmy’s favorite part about decorating cakes is when she’s piping the frosting.

“If I’m decorating a cake or cupcakes, I like to do a lot of different pipings. I like to change my piping tip a lot and use different piping tips to do different textures,” Rahmy said.

Rahmy even adds her own special touch to each of her cakes to make it clear that it’s hers. She uses a special logo and font to represent that it’s hers. An example of this is how Rahmy’s customers immediately recognized
Rahmy’s cake for National Açaí Day because of the writing style she used, after she posted it on Instagram.

When she’s not baking, Rahmy also loves to cook. In fact, between the two, she prefers cooking over baking.

“I think cooking is more fun because you get to eyeball things and you get to have more freedom. For baking, I like to have my recipes so that I know what I’m doing,” Rahmy said.

Rahmy likes to cook many things. Her favorite dishes to cook are pasta and steak.

Makayla Bolling (12) is a friend of Rahmy’s and a loyal customer of her business. Bolling loves Lai’s Cakery, Rahmy’s cake business, and thinks the cakes are delicious.

For Bolling’s 18th birthday, Rahmy made a chocolate coffee cake with a surprise design.

“[The cake] was genuinely so amazing… It was a pink cake, and it had bows on it. It was sparkly and Rahmy made it coquette-esque with lots of swirls and flowers.”