As a young girl in Grimes, Iowa, Schey Brown loved to bake cookies and cakes with her grandmother — and has now turned that favorite childhood activity into a business. She recently launched Homicidal Cakes (Cakes To Kill For) as a home-based business. Her cottage food license is based in Fernley, but she delivers to surrounding areas, including Fallon, Silver Springs, and Dayton. She specializes in high-end cakes, cupcakes, macarons, and gourmet cookies.
Brown is an executive pastry chef and earned her baking and pastry degree from the Auguste Esc
offier School of Culinary Arts. Although it was an online program, she described the exacting and thorough steps she went through for each lesson. Lessons began with a picture of mise en place, the culinary practice of preparing and organizing all the ingredients and equipment before cooking. From there, she photographed every step — showing how her meringue had stiff peaks, proving her macaron feet and shells were perfected, and plating the final display.
She said the master chef instructors taught students to develop their palate by having them describe the texture, flavor, and aroma of each dish — skills they could later use for menu building.
Before she was a chef, Brown served her country. She said her grandmother supported her decision to join the military after high school, and she went on to serve ten years in the Navy as an aircrew survival equipmentman, formerly known as a parachute rigger. She excitedly described the survival gear she packed into the seats of pilots for P-3 Orions, P-8 Poseidons, and F/A-18E/F Hornets. Her co-workers at NAS Fallon often reaped the rewards of her “stress baking.” As she looked to her future after the Navy, her grandmother once again provided guidance and urged her to make baking her profession.
She served in Florida and Hawaii before arriving at NAS Fallon. Brown utilized the tuition assistance program available to sailors and completed her culinary studies before she was medically retired from the Navy.
Brown guarantees freshness and says her goods are all baked within one day of pickup. She focuses on round cakes, sheet cakes, cupcakes, macarons, gourmet cookies, sourdough bread, and sourdough muffins and bagels. She can also fulfill specialty requests. Her lead time is three days’ notice, and she requires a deposit up front and full payment before delivery to ensure customers don’t back out and leave her with a cake she can’t sell. She accepts most forms of payment, including credit cards, Venmo, Cash App, and Facebook Pay.
Examples and pricing of her baked goods can be found on her Facebook page, Homicidal Cakes by Schey Niccole. You can also visit homicidalcakes.square.site or call 515-865-5776.
Photo: A tiered layer cake made by executive pastry chef Schey Brown. Photo courtesy Schey Brown.
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