8. THE CAKE BOSS

WHEN MERSIHA opened her home bakery in 2011, the orders flew in.

She made Porsche cakes, soccer cakes, flag cakes. Vegan and gluten-free cakes. Her customers said her cakes tasted different than any bakery-bought cake. “In Bosnia, we use more butter, and also Nutella,” Mersiha explained. “American cakes are sweeter.”

She soon had 6,000 followers on Instagram.

She and Hajrudin worked as a team. He baked the cakes; she covered them with fondant, a smooth, thick paste made of sugar and water. Then she decorated them.

Her mind would spin: “I think about product, product,” she said.

She started following different pastry chefs online. She liked Buddy Valastro, the star of Cake Boss, the reality TV series. He had taken over Carlo’s Bakery, his father’s Hoboken shop, before starting a food empire.

“But he tries to appeal to everyone,” she said. On his videos, he made Christmas cookies, rolled out a cake that looked like a Las Vegas casino, and gave tours of his home. “He’s not a perfectionist like me.”

Her favorite was Ron Ben-Israel, an Israeli-American pastry chef based in Manhattan; she admired his elegant, whimsical cakes. One of his cakes resembled a pile of Chanel and Hermès boxes. A wedding cake had a cluster of white peonies.

“He’s the king of cakes,” Mersiha said. “That’s how I fell in love with cakes.”

But she and Hajrudin were not making any money. Materials were expensive, and since they were just beginning, they kept their prices low, afraid people would not pay more. They were overly generous: If a customer ordered a cake for 125 people, they delivered one that served 150.

“I’m just making change,” Mersiha said, matter-of-factly. “I make more teaching my ESL classes.”

“But we’re trying to make our names. That’s all that matters for now.”

Her customers’ delighted response—and emails sent by guests at events she catered—excited her. “When I see that smile . . .,” she said.

By the end of her first year in business, her confidence had grown. She stopped watching videos of the Cake Boss and of Ron Ben-Israel.

“I saw I can do it.”