By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
VICTORIA — Surrounded by German chocolate cake, homemade truffles and puff pastries, 21-year-old Haley Robben said she has found her passion — baking.
Robben started a baking business — Bakeology — in her hometown of Victoria in 2017. Her shop is on 10th Street across the street from the grade school where she also works part-time as a paraprofessional.
She tried a semester at the University of Kansas studying political science, but she was just not into her classes. She talked to her adviser, who encouraged her to seek her passion.
Robben remembered spending hours with her grandmothers making all kinds of baked goods, especially her favorite pumpkin pies.
“Both grandmothers would have counters covered in sugar cookies and all different kinds of holiday cookies for everybody to eat when people came over to our houses,” she said.
Her adviser suggested the culinary arts program at Johnson County Community College.
Robben’s skills spread via word of mouth. She started a Facebook page for Bakeology and is now taking regular orders via social media.
With a brisk business and her family nearby, she said it was an easy decision to move back to Victoria. Today she is busy with orders from sugar cookies to elaborate wedding cakes.
Robben’s most popular item is her decorated sugar cookies. She can put just about anything on a sugar cookie and has had some interesting requests from clients wanting cookies for bachelorette and bachelor parties. She also regularly makes cookies for birthday parties at the school, which she hand delivers across the street when she heads over to work for the day.
Robben said she is always up for a challenge.
“I get so into the motion of sugar cookies and decorated birthday cakes, which is so fun and I like the versatility of that,” she said, “but I really love when someone gives me a weird flavor or something they are interested in. I just recently did a pink champagne cake, and I thought that was something different. I had never made one before.”
Robben said she enjoys the precision in baking. She has had to take both baking and cooking courses in culinary school. Cooking often requires the chef to season to taste. A lot of science goes into baking. Individual ingredients like baking soda help pull the baked goods together.
“I love that it has to be super precise and you have to get that exact amount in or it probably is not going to turn out the way you want it to,” she said. “I think I am kind of a perfectionist, and think that is where that really plays in really well for me. I just want to get it exactly right.”
Robben is not immune from baking disasters. She said she has had wedding cakes she started, threw out and started over the day of the wedding.
“Just today, I was making cinnamon rolls, and I didn’t set the timer,” she said. “I came back 20 minutes later, and they were totally charred. I guess no cinnamon rolls today. It happens all the time, and I think it is important to know that just because I have some schooling, doesn’t mean that everything I make is going to turn out perfect.
“It shouldn’t discourage people from trying to bake because they have one thing that goes wrong. It doesn’t make you a bad baker. If it did, no one would be a good baker.”
For the home baker, Robben strongly encouraged reading and following the recipe. There are reasons the recipe is telling you to take those steps, she said. Take your time, and don’t skip steps.
Robben has one more semester left in culinary school, which she is completing online. She said she is unsure about her long-term plans, but Bakeology is thriving. She said she hopes someday baking will be her only job.
“This is going pretty well for me — the made-to-order — because it seems to give me the chance to make a lot of different things and not really limit myself. I think when you have a set menu and you don’t really want to veer from that, you get so caught up in the same things and you never really adapt and change to all the new trends. I love that I can do that pretty easily this way.”
To order, customers can send a direct message on the Bakeology Facebook page or text Robben at 785-735-4474. Sugar cookies start at $15 a dozen and costs vary from there depending on complexity and the ingredients.