Whether it whets your appetite or not, there’s something objectively pure and life-fulfilling about seeing a tiny taco on top of a cupcake. It’s like crossing something off a bucket list you never thought was there to begin with.
But this particular taco was made of fondant icing, like many of home baker Terri Wahlberg’s themed creations, as part of a unique dessert selection she designed for a taco night dinner gathering. From Christmas trees to mermaid tails, Wahlberg jumps at the chance to customize cookies, cake pops, brownies, and other sweet treats based on whatever framework a client has in mind.
“Oh, she’s really into Betty Boop? I’m like, ‘Done!’” Wahlberg said, referring to one of her recent custom orders, a multilayered birthday cake topped off with an intricate, edible figure of everyone’s favorite animated flapper.
A full-time operations manager at Santa Maria Tire by day, Wahlberg’s part-time baking venture started on Instagram, with Wahly’s Sweet Treats (@wahlyssweettreats), as a way to share her homemade goodies with friends and loved ones, but her endeavor quickly evolved into getting orders from strangers through direct messaging.
“The last couple of years, it just kind of blew up,” said Wahlberg, a self-described night owl when it comes to baking.
“It’s late at night. I usually don’t start baking until 9 p.m.,” Wahlberg told the Sun, as she usually only has time for dessert crafting in the evenings after each work day.
The time Wahlberg spends baking is a part-time workload in its own right, but overall it feels more like catharsis than a second job, she explained.
“Baking on the side is fun, it’s actually a stress reliever for me—which is really odd because it’s pretty stressful making those things. Especially cakes; cakes scare me structurally, especially when I start to add more layers. If it falls, it’s gonna be a real bummer,” Wahlberg said. “Lately, I’ve been doing a lot more wedding cakes and birthday cakes, which is really a little out of my comfort zone. But it’s allowing me to get better at it.”
The comfort food she ranks highest in her comfort zone is cupcakes, Wahlberg’s all-time favorite thing to bake. The self-taught baker became obsessed with Cupcake Wars—a reality show in which several bakers compete in a differently themed cupcake-baking competition each episode—about five years ago, she said.
“I got addicted to it. I just thought it was really cool watching these home bakers or professional bakers come in and on the fly just challenge themselves with oddball ingredients,” Wahlberg said of the show.
Wahlberg also found Pinterest to be a consistent source of inspiration when it comes to discovering unique dessert designs.
“In all honesty, I am not artistic. I cannot draw to save my life,” said Wahlberg, who usually works from a reference image but likes to add her own twists and turns. “I’ll just see something and try to emulate it or tweak it to what I think it should be.”
When asked if she enjoyed baking as a child, Wahlberg said it wasn’t until adulthood that she became interested, almost more out of necessity than anything, she explained.
“I bake because it’s what I can do. Cooking, I cannot,” she laughed.
Prior to Wahlberg’s Cupcake Wars obsession, she had already dipped her toes into dessert baking in order to have something homemade to offer at dinner parties, potlucks, and barbecues. The biggest irony is Wahlberg doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth herself, except when it comes to chocolate chip cookies, she admitted, calling it her one weakness.
“It’s really weird because I’m not a sweet eater at all. I don’t taste any of my own stuff,” Wahlberg said. “My husband is the one who has benefitted from all of this because he’s the taste tester.”
Wahlberg even named her Wahly’s Instagram handle after her husband’s childhood nickname, and as a nod to their last name of course.
“Some people are like, ‘Why did you pick that?’ And I’m like, ‘Do you know what my last name is?’” Wahlberg laughed. “It’s been my husband’s nickname. As a kid, they always called him Wally.”
Wahlberg was born and raised in Santa Maria, where she continues to live with her husband. And although they’re not thinking of leaving the area anytime soon, Wahlberg has one request if the couple ever decides to move from their home of 20-plus years.
“We were just talking the other night, and I said, ‘You know when we move to our next house, I really want a kitchen with big counter space, a big island, lots of storage,” she listed.
While stay-at-home orders and COVID-19 closures have freed up time for Wahlberg to bake more often than usual, it also freed up space, she explained. After the first wave of the pandemic precautions began in March, Wahlberg decided it might be a good time to renovate a specific room in the house.
“Back in the day, scrapbooking was really popular, and I was into that heavily,” Wahlberg said, explaining her old craft room, which recently got a makeover. “But I thought to myself, ‘Out with the old and in with the new.’ So I just bought some storage shelves and really organized the room for baking supplies.
“I didn’t really have enough space for everything before that, so things were sitting in bags everywhere,” Wahlberg added. “It’s kind of a challenge having four different things going on in my small little kitchen at the same time. But I love getting creative.”
Arts Editor Caleb Wiseblood is craving a homemade cupcake. Send comments to cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Dec 24-31, 2020.