The art, science and irresistible rewards of...Cupcakes

When Laura May was going through wedding planning she found an additional love besides that for her husband, rekindling a hobby from childhood.

May always enjoyed baking, but doing it as a business didn’t rise to the occasion until the couple sought out someone to make their desserts for their wedding guests. They purchased their cake and cupcakes from a home baker.

It was basely a month after that in the fall of 2021 that May started her own home-baking business, first in Cedar Grove and now in the Town of Belgium, specializing in cupcakes, cakes and cookies.

She calls it Sweet LuLu May’s. LuLu was a nickname her family gave her as a child, and it stuck.

Her business helps pay for the family of four’s traveling hobby. The Mays visit relatives in Florida, recently took a trip to Oregon and plan to go to Iceland in spring.

“It’s our family fun money,” May said. “I’ve increased sales over the years, and we’ll see where it goes.”

Her sales, oddly enough, don’t boom during the holidays. “December is probably my slowest time of the year,” she said. That’s when people revive their own traditions of making and decorating Christmas cookies with their families. May does it with her 9 and 5-year-old sons.

May has developed a system. She keeps dry ingredients on hand, but asks customers for 48-hour notice so she can shop for the rest of the items and ensure they’re fresh.

She bakes on Friday nights after she gets home from her full-time office job in Milwaukee. “I don’t go out for fish fries,” May said.

After a late night of baking, Saturday morning is often pickup day. She will deliver to a certain radius, but most customers come to her home.

May has the baking down pat. The decorating can be another story, varying from order to order. That’s also the part May loves the most. “I definitely like the creativity that goes into it,” she said.

She has made custom cupcakes with themes of “Toy Story,” unicorns, “Alice in Wonderland,” Highland cattle complete with their long strands of hair, and a Wednesday cake that is half black and white and the other half bursting with colors.

Seeing the finished product is a relishing reward for the 2011 Ozaukee High School grad. She has woken up her husband up at 1 a.m. on a Friday night to show him her work.

“I do get excited,” she said. “I send photos to my family. I get giddy.”

A piping bag is her decorative tool, but the sugar icing called fondant is not May’s medium. She tried making marshmallow fondant once  and it broke her mixer. Her husband, an electrician, took it apart and fixed it, but that machine has since been relegated to second string.

She utilizes one vital resource to taste test. “I have a wide variety of honest family and friends,” she said. Her husband and children also devour her samples that don’t make the cut for her customers.

Her youngest son likes to decorate leftover cupcakes. “His go-to is trying to make little monster cupcakes,” May said.

She offers a variety of traditional cupcake flavors, from vanilla and chocolate to vanilla funfetti and yellow cupcake with chocolate buttercream. She makes gluten-free and vegan varieties as well.

Many customers seek mini cupcakes and May has more than 20 choices, including Harry Potter “butterbeer,” peanut butter and jelly, lemon raspberry and seasonal flavors like caramel apple spice, gingerbread and pumpkin.

May operates under Wisconsin’s Cottage Food Law, which she said prohibits selling cheesecake, cream cheese frosting or individual slices of cake.

May gets repeat customers, including one family for which she has made desserts for the gender reveal party, baby shower and first and second birthdays.

Sometimes, people from Illinois find May’s business online and stop on their way to Door County.

Around her baking schedule, May also does all the cooking for her family. She recently made beef stroganoff and regularly makes beef enchiladas.

Her interest in baking and cooking came early in life. Her mother made her Swedish pancakes, which are similar to crepes and are now her children’s favorite breakfast.

She is self-taught from trial and error and an occasional video online.

May also likes art and used to do oil paintings, a skill she now employs to make cupcakes look nearly too good to eat.

Her children think their mother could compete on “Is it Cake” on Netflix, in which bakers try to fool judges as to which objects are cake and which are not.

May usually listens to audio books or watches TV as she creates her cupcakes. Her kitchen was designed to accommodate her business. She has a double oven in which she can bake four dozen cupcakes, and she has a dedicated pantry just for her business’ ingredients in order to keep them separate.

May set up a booth at a few local farmers markets and events like Summer Nights LIVE in Belgium and Music in the Park in Random Lake to get her name out. Now, she only does the Belgium Area Chamber of Commerce’s annual Brew and Chew event in spring.

Regardless of the amount of business May gets, “I usually take it all on. I don’t want to turn people down.”

Six orders in one weekend is her high so far, but May said she is “definitely not at capacity.

“I would like for it to keep growing to where it was a full-time gig,” she said.

May is seeking nearby hired help but not having any luck.

“I keep asking my son when he wants to get paid for doing dishes and he walks away,” she said.

For more information, visit www.sweetlulumays.com.