Sometimes the icing on the cake is more than just frosting. For Cake Hoopla owner JoJo Keating and customers who visit her DIY decorating studio, the fun begins with the finish.
The studio, now in its third year, provides the tools, supplies and the canvas – cakes or cupcakes baked off-site by an in-house team working from Keating’s recipes. And, step by step, Keating teaches studio visitors the techniques to execute her favorite part of the process: decorating.
“It’s the artistic part of baking; the part that sparks curiosity,” she said. “I love sitting with a blank cake and bringing a design to life, one detail at a time, until everything comes together into a cohesive creation.”
And with the holiday season rolling in, Keating is getting festive with a variety of themed offerings aimed at creating delectable confections that can do double duty as table décor.
She and co-owner Katie Troxel launched in 2023 using a $25,000 matching grant from the Tigard Triangle Business Opportunity Fund, twisting the You Paint Pottery model into something sweetly original.
The women were college friends who met on the University of Idaho women’s swim team, and the pair bonded early over ice cream.
“One of my first memories in college is going to Katie’s dorm and eating like a pint of Ben and Jerry’s after swim practice,” she said.
Keating’s love for baking emerged a few years later when she turned to pastry making as a stress reliever during law school. She spent a decade working as an attorney, serving as resident baker for family and friends before the combination of COVID closures and a maternity leave opened a space to rethink her career.
After becoming the resident baker for family and friends, making cakes for showers, birthdays, and weddings, her twin sister encouraged her to make a career of it.
“I thought I might open a bakery and be a cake decorator, my own cake decorating shop, and then it evolved from there because that’s been done a million times,” Keating said.
She and Troxel ping-ponged ideas until they landed on DIY decorating with on-site tutorials, camps, classes, cake and sip nights, open studio hours, parties, corporate events and most recently, ready-made take-home DIY kits.
This month, two “no school day” kids camps will focus on upcoming holidays, sending participants home with decorated six-inch cakes and other goodies, and an upcoming three-part cake decorating 101 series aimed at adults and kids 10 and up will teach the decorating basics to create a beautifully finished Christmas cake.
“It starts with the foundations of building a cake from the cake board up, and then finishing it with a very simple design,” Keating said. “There’s a vintage cake design in the middle of that (series), teaching the very detailed piping and the writing. Then the third one is buttercream flowers, which is focused on using a piping nail to make a rose and assemble them onto cupcakes.”
That detail shifts to holiday accent work for the Christmas series, which begins Nov. 8. Classes are available as a series or à la carte.
The upcoming full-day Nov. 11, Fall into Fun School’s Out Cake Camp brings autumn colors and creatures into the studio. Campers will explore art and learn decorating techniques, sculpt woodland creatures out of fondant, paint wafer-paper leaves, and head home from an afternoon popcorn and hot cocoa party with the six-inch cake they decorate.
At the half-day Nov. 25 Holiday Cake Camp, campers will practice making edible Christmas trees and return home with a six-inch holiday cake.
Cake Hoopla is located at 7173 SW Dartmouth St. For more information visit cakehoolpla.com.
