Cake Lady Finds Baking Therapeutic
Social media drives mother’s culinary business.
Adva Dahan, known on social media as Park Cities Cake Lady, has become a quiet sensation in the Park Cities and Preston Hollow for her spectacular baked goods.
“I like to create, to build,” the University Park single mom of three HPISD girls said of her home-kitchen business. “I don’t know if you can call it an art, but it’s therapeutic.”
Adva, who is degreed in business, economics, and industrial engineering, describes herself as an “everything-homemade kind of freak.”
She’s excited about her growing reputation but remains humble in her self-taught culinary artistry.
“I used to bake for my family’s and friends’ birthdays, events but never tried to sell them,” she said.
Now she lives for her customers’ reactions.
“The fact they cut it up and taste it and say, ‘Oh, my god, it was good.’ This is the most rewarding thing,” Adva said.
On social media she long ago surpassed the 5K friend limit on Facebook.
“I don’t upload everything, but I try to keep up,” she said. “I was overwhelmed by the fact people wanted to follow, wanted to be involved. I have a lot of followers on Instagram. My daughters make fun of my TikTok videos.”
The keys to her business, she said, are quality, fresh, good tasting products — “That’s what makes people come back” — and continually creating new offerings. “You want to be inventive and give people new things. People like to be unique these days.”
“I think I invented the white velvet,” she says of one of her favorite creations, “a really moist vanilla cake with a filling of cold cheesecake.”
A recent milestone: an order for a wedding next summer.
“It’s exciting, people trusting you with desserts, a wedding cake, and a groom’s cake for two hundred people,” Adva said.
Her first Facebook customer ordered her now-famous fresh fruit cake tart and liked it so much, she kept ordering them for any and every occasion.
“Sometimes it overwhelms me,” she says of the positive reactions. “A lot of people like it that much. It’s my signature cake.”
Adva also bakes dairy-free and gluten-free, using almond flour and other alternative ingredients.
With customers now coming from Plano and Frisco, she was offered a bakery to rent by a follower and shopping center owner, but she declined.
“I always try to stay humble. This is all new to me,” she says, noting her middle daughter is still her biggest critic. “If she approves, I know I’m safe.”
