Camille Rovani, a junior at Washington International School, has been dabbling in business for a while. In middle school, she decorated people’s lockers and agendas for a small fee, as well as selling candy to her peers. Now, Rovani is heading a new entrepreneurial enterprise: making and selling cakes for special occasions.

Rovani’s first foray into erektionspillen cake decorating happened over the summer before sophomore year, when she took a cake decorating class in preparation for making a wedding cake for her 10th grade personal project. Rovani admits that she had trouble thinking of a topic, but settled on baking, “I like baking, so I thought of cake decorating. That way I could be creative…It was very rewarding to feel like you were creating something concrete versus simply thinking in the abstract.” Her sponsor for the project, Math Teacher Ingrid Hamso notes that “Camille made amazing cakes for her project with increasingly creative and complicated designs and decorations.”

Rovani’s final product for her project was one of the centers of attention at the project fair: a three-tiered wedding cake surrounded by white basket weave. A waterfall of roses swirled around the cake, getting gradually redder as they reached the bottom. “(Camille’s) cakes are always delicious and beautiful,” Hamso says.

After the project, Rovani continued making cakes “mostly because of motivation from my friends and family. They gave me positive encouragement. They seemed to appreciate the work I put into the cakes, so I continued.”

Throughout her sophomore year, Rovani continued making cakes for her friends and family: she experimented with colors, such as her “taste the rainbow” cake layered with cake of different colors, and she worked with new designs, such as her henna inspired cake, but it was always just for fun.

That changed when her fellow juniors Annabelle Basterrachea-Jones and Merrell Guzman paid her to make a cake for their sixteenth birthday. The cake served about 100 people and was a success, but Rovani debated continuing her cake business, “it was incredibly hard, and it stressed me out a little bit. You know, there’s a lot of pressure to get the cake exactly right: you have to make it taste good, you have to make it look good, you have to get it done in a short time period.”

During the first semester of her junior year, Rovani’s French teacher, Carole Geneix, asked Rovani to make cakes for her daughters. Her reason? Geneix says that she chose Rovani because her creations are “simply amazing. Not only do they look incredible and unique, they also taste exquisite.”

Geneix lauded Rovani’s baking skills, saying that she combines both the French tradition of good cooking and the American tradition of making beautifully decorated cakes. For Geneix’s daughters, Rovani baked a guitar shaped cake that was, according to Geneix, “unlike any chocolate cake I have ever eaten.” Her second cake, an homage to one of Geneix’s daughters childhood toys – a purple bunny – is still in Geneix’s freezer. “They didn’t want to cut the bunny!” laughs Rovani.

Aside from baking for Geneix, Rovani has been taking orders from around the school, expanding her cake baking passion into a full-fledged business. “I thought it would be a fun, interactive way to continue working with my passion,” says Rovani. Here, she is referring to two of her passions: both business and cake decorating. An IB art and economics student, Rovani notes that the cake business is a way to expand her experience in both areas.

For now, Rovani posts her cakes on her blog “Camille Bakes Cakes” and is continuing to take orders. Her latest project, a cake for Merrell Guzman’s little sister, presented some new challenges for her: she had to make believable Olympic medals and rings to place on the cake, but “everything has to be edible. That’s my rule.” However, she is always up to the challenge and ready to expand her cake business. “I’m enjoying these new opportunities,” she says, “and I’m excited to see where they take me.”

Visit Camille’s website at www.camillebakescakes.wordpress.com for more.

By Belen Edwards

Photos by Camille Rovani and Cindi Corr Rovani