MINT HILL, NC – Lisa Palmer has been baking since childhood. After receiving her first Betty Crocker Cookbook at age 9, she started making the delicious recipes found within and with the help of her mother learned to make donuts as well. Years later, she enrolled in the Navy as a Culinary Specialist, and when the opportunity arose to become a baker, she jumped at the chance. She learned to make bread from scratch and created her first professionally decorated cake, a bear-shaped birthday cake that was customary for all the Navy crew member’s birthdays.
Lisa owned her own boutique bakery, Saturday Morning Cakes, from 1999-2013. She has appeared on the Discovery Channel’s “Bake It Like Buddy” and is certified by Wilton, the leader in cake decorating, as a Wilton Instructor. After closing her bakeries in 2013 to battle breast cancer, Lisa became the food and nutrition instructor at the local high school in 2016. She loves teaching culinary skills and had always been told during her years with Saturday Morning Cakes that if she taught classes, people would most certainly come.
In 2018, Lisa opened The Cake Dojo in Mint Hill. It is here that she lives her passion, teaching a variety of cake decorating classes to adults and children ages 8 and up. Her classes provide clients with everything they will need to learn the art of cake decorating. She provides the cake, icing, and necessary tools right on site, which she finds is more relaxing for clients, as they don’t need to remember to bring a cake or separate tools.
Lisa’s Beginner Class teaches how to make the icing, fill icing bags, and level and ice cakes and cupcakes. She also teaches how to create basic borders, simple flowers, fondant, and gum paste flowers. Her advanced classes follow current trends in decorating, and she offers a wedding cake decorating class for caterers as well as the general public. The Cake Dojo holds First Friday Forty-Five minute classes for Fifteen dollars (F4 classes). In the First Friday classes, clients have the opportunity to receive instruction in a variety of techniques to brush up on skills they have started to learn. Lisa is holding a “Nailed It” competition where families will compete in a cake decorating contest for a prize.
The Cake Dojo offers a variety of fun themed and holiday classes for children ages 8 and up as well as a creative summer camp. For more information on the classes offered during COVID 19, please contact Lisa Palmer at The Cake Dojo at (980) 318-9798. They can be found online on Facebook @thecakedojo and online at https://thecakedojo.com/. The Cake Dojo is located at 4614 Wilgrove Mint Hill Rd in Mint Hill/Charlotte.
