Jorie Hodapp, 15, literally has a lot on her plate. In addition to playing on Dublin Coffman High School’s golf team, staying involved in church activities and keeping up with schoolwork, she has been running her own cake baking business, Jorie Cakes, since she was 12 years old.
Jorie’s baking career started when she took a cake-decorating class at a local craft store. She discovered a passion for baking and decorating cakes and continued to take classes. Soon she began baking for friends, and a few months later, Jorie Cakes was formed.
“All my friends would say, ‘I want a Jorie cake,’” she says.
Part of Jorie’s inspiration to start her own business came from her grandparents, who owned the TAG Market in Shawnee Hills.
“My grandpa helps me a lot with the business side,” Jorie says.
Her cakes come in a variety of flavors – all made from scratch in her home kitchen. “I find recipes and change them to make them perfect for
my cakes,” Jorie says.
A cake can take Jorie anywhere from three to six hours to create. She does all the baking and decorating on her own, with occasional help from her parents, BJ and Lynn, and friends from school.
The starting price for most Jorie Cakes is $30 and increases based on the amount of time it takes to make and how intricate the design is. Jorie also sells cupcakes starting at $16 a dozen. She has made cakes for birthdays, graduations, baby showers and bridal showers, and even made a wedding cake this past March.
“I will make pretty much anything you ask for,” she says.
She has decorated everything from a bathtub cake to a grenade cake. Some of her favorite designs include a dolphin cake and a University of Kentucky wedding cake. Jorie’s Reese’s cake, chocolate cake with peanut butter icing and crushed Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups on top, is one of her most popular orders.
She started the business baking one cake a week. After being featured in Coffman’s school magazine and Dublin’s local TV channel, business took off. Now she works on three to five orders in a week that come in via phone at 614-580-5669 or email at joriehodapp@gmail.com.
Recently, Jorie’s time has been spent preparing for the Ohio State Fair baking and decorating competitions. She won second place for one cake in 2011 and earned first and second place wins in 2012.
She also received an offer to provide her carrot cake for The Montgomery Inn in Dublin and Cincinnati but had to turn it down.
“The demand was too high, and I just wouldn’t have enough time to keep up with my schoolwork,” Jorie says.
Jorie says it was difficult to manage all of her activities and her business when she first started.
“I wasn’t used to working on a deadline,” Jorie says. “But my time management is getting better now.”
She plans to continue growing her business during her junior and senior years of high school and possibly in college. She hopes to pursue a degree in business and open her own storefront bakery after graduating from college.
Jorie enjoys the independence of running her own business.
“Baking allows me to put my passion into something that I love and make others happy,” she says.
Hayley Ross is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at laurand@cityscenemediagroup.com.
