My friend, Kristin Kato, owner of A Cake Life seems like a quiet girl, but she's full of smiles and has a crazy awesome talent.  After some soul searching to find what she wanted to do in life, knowing it wasn't beading...or knitting (inside joke) .... she found that baking was her calling.  She gets her inspiration from fashion, incorporating styles and textures from fashion like pleating, ruffles, brooches, weaving or quilting.  She also incorporates elements from couples invitations or Save the Date cards.  Her philosophy is 'less is more' and creates clean, basic cake in a contemporary style, simple yet elegant elements of color, flowers or touches to so details can be showcased.  She watches the food network, shows like amazing wedding cakes or ultimate cake off and is greatful for the DVR so she can watch them when she's not baking.  Her most challenging cake to date was the UH Law School Building for the Former Hawaii Supreme Court Chief Justice William S. Richardson's 90th Birthday Gala.  The final product weighted nearly 60 pounds.

I first met her during the Oasis launch party.   At first I've only heard of her and her popular red velvet cupcakes, but never had it.   So when I met her she handed me one, and me trying to be 'eating healthy' I thought 'ok, just ONE of the mini cupcakes only'  It was amazing, mouth watering, sweet, and I actually stalked her to get another.  A few months later was my husband's birthday and I called her to order some of those red velvet cupcakes.  It was supposed to be the 3 of us celebrating so I didn't order much.  But then my inlaws came and I ... hid the cupcakes, didn't wanna share.  HAHA....I ended up sharing though because I couldn't help but brag about it.   I swear there must be some 'secret recipe' because no where else tastes like it.  But other than her popular red velvet cupcakes, her business custom makes wedding, birthday, and any event cakes.  She can design any theme you might have in mind.  She even did a Twilight theme cake, no kidding!  It's a replica of the cover of the book of the first volume of the Twilight series (photo below) The hand and apple were NOT a computer printed edible image.  She painted the hands and apple out of LOTS of petal dusts and powdered food coloring which achieved the textured and shadowy look.  This coloring alone took 2 hours to complete.

She'll be designing my son's birthday cake at the end of the month, a 'Hot Wheels' theme.  Stay tuned for that.  Anyway thanks for your time Kristin, can't wait to have more cake next week =)

Some photos of her cakes (photos not taken by me)