Internet cake decorating sensation Sideserf Cake Studio in Austin, Texas, was born in 2013, after artist Natalie Sideserf created a cake sculpture in the likeness of country music legend Willie Nelson. Photos of the cake were posted to the online news site Reddit.com, where it was the first of many cakes to reach No. 1 on the front page.

Sideserf was an art major in college at Ohio State, with a concentration on painting. Upon graduation, after recommendation from a friend, she began decorating cakes after being inspired by popular cake design shows on television.

“A friend of mine who used to watch a lot of cake competition shows said, ‘you’re good at sculpting; you should do this.’ It turns out cake is a material I like working with,” she told The Daily Beast. “Working with cake is just like sculpting with clay, or wire, or whatever, which I had done a lot of as an artist. Soon after that, there was an opportunity in Austin for me to go work in a bakery. I started working and they let me make cakes the way I wanted to.”

Since then, Natalie and Sideserf Cake Studio have been known for some of the most realistic – and surrealistic – cakes the world has ever seen.

In 2016, husband Dave Sideserf left his job as a director at a tech company to join Natalie in the kitchen. Having worked kitchen lines through college and continuing as a home cook afterward, the transition to baker was almost seamless.

Together, the couple work with customers all over central Texas to come up with unique flavor combinations and even more unique designs, creating not only stunning cakes but a truly memorable experience. 

Customers range from small families to large companies like The Alamo Drafthouse – and television producers at American Idol to country star Keith Urban. Sideserf Cake Studio was also featured on two seasons of Food Network’s Texas Cake House, a program hosted by Natalie and Dave highlighting the process of crazy, elaborate cakes.

On their YouTube channel, which has more than 38,000 followers, the couple document their cake process and signature cakes, including their famous onion cake.

“The onion cake, a lot of people think I took onion skin and placed it on a cake. Which is not true, that would be gross,” Natalie told The New York Post. Through experimenting, she found the perfect substitute in vanilla wafer paper.