Christian Oates fills the cupcake liners with batter. (Lauren Tucker/WTIU News)
Some students at Indiana University have developed their passion for baking into businesses.
Christian Oates, a senior at IU, has always loved cooking. He has been baking cupcakes since high school, but officially started Cardinal Cupcakes a few years ago.
“My first real memory in the kitchen was making breakfast pizza,” he said. “Then throughout high school, I did some Rice Krispies and everything. I don't know how I ended up doing cupcakes…I think it's easier than a cake and easily shareable.”
Oates first baked cookies-and-cream cupcakes for his friends on Little 500 weekend in 2022. Since then, he’s experimented with other recipes, baking s’mores, red velvet and vanilla cupcakes. He finds recipes often scrolling through Pinterest and tweaks them to make them his own.
“Before this, I kind of hated cupcakes, so I like to make them in a way that I would eat them,” he said. “I know people hate the icing of a lot of different cakes and everything because they're too sweet, too thick. And the cream cheese or whipped cream icings, they're lighter in texture and lighter in sweetness, but they're still really good.”
Oates said he often bakes for his friends, and also gets orders for his church and the occasional wedding. He spends the money he makes on ingredients and materials for the next batch. Oates has had to pay more for eggs with bird flu spreading through farms across Indiana.
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He’s trying to hold the line on price while making cupcakes he would pay for himself.
“People have told me before you should raise your prices,” he said. “You know you are going to want to be able to make some money, but it's sufficient enough for me.”
As a college student, Oates said time management can be challenging. During the summer, when he tends to get more orders, he premixed batter and broke it down into a multi-day process. On a perfect day, he’ll start early in the morning, but he often finds himself baking late at night.
“The latest I've probably been baking was— I've stopped at like, 3 a.m., and that was me kind of forcing myself to stop before I go crazy,” he said. “I've had…12-hour days, all on my feet, feet aching and a little cranky. It's a part of it. In the end, you're like, 'All right, it's kind of a fun process.' But when you realize, ‘Okay, I'm going to be doing this for a while,’ it's not fun.”
Right now, it’s just Oates baking cupcakes himself. If he’s at home, sometimes his mom will help. In the future, he would consider expanding his business and opening a food truck.
“Once I get a full-time job, I'll still be baking on the side, trying to put away money and steadily doing things, different events, farmers markets,” he said. “But around that five-year mark, I'll probably revisit. Is this still something that I want to do?... I'd love to have Cardinal Cupcakes be a college-town staple.”
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IU senior Jake Lazar grew up eating his mom’s Mandal bread – a mix between biscotti and chocolate chip cookies. He launched Grandma’s Goodies nine months ago to keep the family recipe, originally his great-grandma’s, alive.
His mother went to culinary school.
“I've just always grown up around her baking and cooking, in addition to my dad, he's also a big chef and baker,” Lazar said. “So, I think just being a little kid and being around it all the time, it's kind of hard not to want to know more about it or just even get good at it yourself.”
Lazar said he bakes in bulk depending on demand. As a part-time student, he has more time to bake and focus on marketing through social media. Similar to Oates, baking a batch is usually a 12-hour process that starts early in the morning. He bakes out of a commercial kitchen in town and listens to rap and country music while doing so. His home kitchen presents too many distractions.
“I live with eight other guys, and I quickly realized that wasn't going to be feasible," he said. "They're always coming over to like, ‘Hey, like, what are you making? Can I try a bite of that?’ So quickly, I was like, 'I think I need to find something new.'”
His mom has helped him spread the word about his business, and has shipped the cookies to about 20 states, the furthest being California. The main mission of the business is to give back; for every 12 bags of cookies sold, Lazar donates one pound to local food banks. He currently partners with Beacon to distribute cookies.
“It's not a common occurrence where someone who's less fortunate has the opportunity to get a freshly baked dessert,” he said.
Lazar would like to keep Grandma’s Goodies alive after he graduates from IU and starts a full-time job in sales.
“Right now, it's kind of just a trial phase. Are people liking it? What is it showing me?” he said. “It was also a great project in terms of learning for me. I didn't know how to do most of this stuff before I started.”
