(upbeat music) I've always loved baking.

It's always been something that I enjoy doing.

I love making people happy and bringing joy to people and what is more joyful than a cupcake.

There was a point when I was on maternity leave with my first, and I was having some serious panic attacks about going back to work at the soul sucking insurance job that I was currently at.

I did not want to go back.

It was seriously causing me like physical pain.

And so I was speaking with my partner about how much I didn't wanna go back.

He's like, well, let's just do Peney Cakes.

Let's do it.

Let's take the leap.

And I was like, all right, let's do it.

Let's take the leap.

And I can't believe it sustained itself.

You know, obviously a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of startups fail within the first two years.

And here I am still going strong and continuing to grow.

It's been incredible.

So yeah, it just took a tiny little smooshy face and a panic attack for me to realize that I deserved better.

I was done working for the man and I wanted to be the woman.

So here I am.

(upbeat music) When people ask me what I do and they ask what is Peney Cakes?

I tell them that I am primarily a mobile bakery.

So I'm not like your typical brick and mortar where you walk in and there's a bunch of bakery cases and you pick stuff out.

I do work and operate out of a brick and mortar, but all of my sales primarily are done out of a food truck, a dessert food truck trailer.

So that is primarily what Peney Cakes is.

(upbeat music) It's funny that I call myself a cupcakery and I am known for my cupcakes, but people love my brownies.

They're very fudgy, rich, delicious brownie.

I'm somebody who, if you're going to eat a brownie I want it to be a brownie.

If you want a cake like brownie then just eat chocolate cake.

That's kind of how I feel about it.

So the brownies are a big hit.

People love, I have a snack attack cupcake.

I actually came up with that when I was working with the brewery on a pairing event.

It's kind of my nonsense.

One, it's got chocolate chips and marshmallows and peanut butter cups and pretzels and potato chips and caramel and all kinds of stuff inside of it.

So that's a really big, big popular one.

My tiramisu cupcake is a really, really popular one.

People also love, oh my gosh, there's so many.

I do like a strawberry lemonade during the summer that people absolutely adore.

I don't know if I've ever had a cupcake that hasn't sold well, but those are the ones that come to my mind that are like the most popular.

(upbeat music) I don't know if I have a typical day at Peney Cakes but I have like a typical week.

But I always try to start the week off with baking than towards the end of the week is when I decorate.

And that's even more, I like to call that my nothing box like the decorating part of it.

Cause I literally can just like zone out completely and just decorate and not think about anything.

It's the more creative part of it and it's the part that I love the best is the decorating side and how can I make this cupcake look as delicious as it tastes.

I know that most people think of artists working in like charcoal and acrylics, right?

Or sculpture.

And I like to say that I work in flour and butter so I can't necessarily draw a stick figure well, and according to my four-year-old, I can't draw anything well, but I can make a cupcake look awesome.

I can make a cupcake look real pretty.

(classical music) It's such a unique experience to be like either at a farmer's market or at an event and see a dessert truck.

It's not something that you see very often.

And I know that it's not very common nationwide even I know they exist out there.

I've looked for them, I've tried to see if there are others out there, but it's so cool to have one in such a small community like this and it's just been really heartwarming and really humbling actually just to see how much Fergus Falls has just really taken me in.

One thing, I've done a lot of talks with youth in like the high school entrepreneur classes here and they ask me a lot of times like, what is one of the biggest challenges you've faced?

And something that I feel like I've run into a lot and being a female and being young or at least perceived as young is I felt like I was being told that my dream wasn't feasible or my dream didn't matter or why don't you do it this way instead.

So I always tell people like, I would tell those young children and especially the girls, like don't let anybody tell you that your dream doesn't matter because they have no idea what they're talking about.

When I was first starting up with Peney Cakes and trying to get support and get guidance and learn about how I should go about doing this, I was told, well I don't understand why you wanna trailer.

Like why don't you just do like big contracts and do like catering?

It's like, well cause I don't wanna cater, like I do cater, I will do custom orders but my dream is a trailer, like I want a cupcake food truck.

I think that's fun.

That's what I want to do and why wouldn't I wanna do what I think is fun?

And so I was told that, I was told well why don't you do donuts or why don't you do this?

Or maybe you should do that.

Like, just constantly being told primarily by men what I should be doing with my business.

And I'm so glad and proud that I stuck to my guns and I was like, no this is what I wanna do and this is what I'm going to do.

And I did it and the cupcake food truck was actually like a five year plan and I got it done in two.

I did what I needed to do and I did it because I believed in myself.