Rob Johnson and his wife, Kelly Bryant, consider their custom baking company a team effort. One bakes and decorates, the other markets and promotes.

“When we meet people and tell them what we do, they kind of do a double-take when they find out my husband is the one who does the baking,” Bryant said. “Here’s this big guy (6-foot-2, 240 pounds) making these wonderful cakes with beautiful, delicate decorations. It doesn’t seem to fit.”

Until six years ago, Johnson’s occupation matched his physique. He was a dietician and nutritionist for professional athletes. Part of that job meant preparing meals for his clients.

“One of my clients asked me if I could make a birthday cake for his kid,” Johnson said. “I said, ‘Sure I can do that.’ After that, the requests started pouring in.”

That first birthday cake was the birth of a business, one that has especially taken off after the couple moved to Columbus from Memphis last November.

At first, they looked for a storefront, an idea that Johnson wasn’t particularly sold on.

Instead, they bought a food truck, which Johnson equipped as a fully-functioning kitchen.

“We don’t use the food truck to set up and sell out of,” Johnson said. “It’s more like my studio, a place where I can go and be creative and not be bothered.”

Johnson, 48, said baking and decorating cakes is a perfect combination of form and function.

“I view the decorating part as art,” he said. “One of my God-given talents is art — sketching, painting, sculpting — and I approach decorating from that point of view. I’ll get an idea in my head and sketch it, then figure out how to translate that idea with what I have learned about how to create images and scenes to cakes.”

Bryant, 43, is constantly amazed at her husband’s artistry.

“It’s so beautiful,” she said. “Some of the decoration work is just incredible. He’s such a stickler for detail. It really is art.”

Art you can eat, which is the other aspect of Johnson’s work he takes pride in.

Although he has no formal training as a baker, he said he has something better.

“I learned from my 101-year old grandmother,” he said. “When I was a kid, my grandmother would make me and my sister help her in the kitchen, so it was always in the back of my mind that someday I’d use that 100 years of knowledge and the southern techniques my grandmother used that you don’t see anymore.”

Most of Johnson’s products are cheesecakes, with dozens of flavors and variations. There are also specialty cakes — weddings, birthdays, retirements, etc..

“I usually have two or three of those orders a week,” he said. “But I’m making cheesecakes every day.”

Depending on the order, Johnson said it can take anywhere from a couple of hours to eight-to-10 hours, maybe more.

“There are times I’m out there in my food truck all night and into the morning,” he said.

While Johnson bakes and decorates, Bryant gets the word out.

“I’ve just started a Facebook page, so up until now it’s been word of mouth,” she said. “Really, when someone gets one of his cakes, they tell other people. My phone is always ringing and I’m getting texts all the time. That tells you how good he is.”

In addition to cakes, Johnson also bakes a variety of pies, cobblers and pastries.

Customers can place orders by calling Sens Cake Artistry at (662) 420-4460.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

READER FAVORITES

• 

  A plan at last: Overhaul planned for ‘most dangerous’ Hwy 45 intersection

  By Braden Simmons • 1 day ago