Meet Paula Vega, Huntington’s queen of cakes.
By Katherine Reasons-Pyles
HQ 75 | AUTUMN 2011
For as long as Paula Vega can remember, baking has been a part of her life.
“I started baking when I was 10 years old, using one of my mom’s recipes,” she recalls. “I baked for church functions, for family, for friends – it was just a hobby, but I loved it.”
Today, Paula Vega owns Paula Vega Cakes, located in an all-new shop on the Ninth Street plaza. She has nine employees, including gifted-artist-turned-cake-decorator Lauren Eargle (“She is amazing and a huge part of our success, and I am honored to work with her!” Vega says). Even with nine employees, Vega says she’ll be hiring more soon. It was just a few weeks ago that Vega moved from her shared space with Third & Ninth Deli-Market to a bakery that’s all her own. But Vega, whose gourmet cupcakes and delicious cakes have only recently taken Huntington by storm, was not always on the path to full-time baking.
“I was a registered nurse for 16 years at Cabell Huntington Hospital,” Vega says. “I started baking for my medical family there; when I’d work the night shift, I’d bring in red velvet cake for all of us – anything to spice up the day. One day someone offered to pay me to bake a cake for a shower, and after the shower I got three more orders. It was all through word of mouth. I started getting so many orders that I had to reduce my hours at the hospital.”
Eventually Vega quit her nursing job and began to focus on baking full time – but there was no time for rest in between. The former Miss West Virginia went from working a few hours a week at the hospital to working 50 hours a week in her home kitchen, where she would prepare wedding cakes, shower cakes, cupcakes and other baked goods for special occasions. When Third & Ninth opened in 2010, owners Sylvia Crickard and Joe Lazaro approached Vega about joining them – and Vega happily jumped onboard with the successful deli.
“It just made sense. I was always baking, and our kitchen at home was definitely not a commercial kitchen,” Vega laughs. “My husband wanted me out of there.”
On her first day at Third & Ninth, Vega sold six dozen cupcakes. Now, in one day she sells 700 – and they often sell out by 2 p.m.
“God has really blessed us at Paula Vega Cakes,” Vega says. “The responses we’ve gotten are just amazing. We’ve had orders from the Capitol, from Ashland, from people who want to take my cupcakes to their out-of-state friends and family. It helps me see that this is in God’s will for me; this is what I’m meant to do.”
But does she ever miss being a nurse?
“I loved being a nurse, and I really do miss nursing. And occasionally when somebody cuts their finger or gets hurt across the street, someone will grab me and I’ll get to do a little bit of my nursing. It’s nice in a way.”
However, Vega is able to draw up a surprising number of similarities between her two vastly different careers.
“They are both service-oriented, and they’re both so rewarding,” she says. “You’re still making people feel good. And really, a kitchen is lot like a hospital – the cleanliness, the washing of the hands, the gloves, the stress of having orders added to the schedule at the last minute. When I first started, I called my customers my patients out of habit. I’d say, ‘There are patients out there! Someone needs to take care of them!’ And my cooling rack is ‘the recovery room’; I call it that on purpose now, but at first it was totally accidental.”
Vega’s new shop is located at 308 Ninth St., and it features indoor seating – including tables decorated by Vega’s 13-year-old stepdaughter and niece – as well as curbside service for those who call in their orders. She will sell her famous cupcakes, made-to-order cakes for weddings and other special events, brownies, pies and other treats; in fact, she went through training at a Bolivian bakery earlier this year to learn from the experts how to make tres leches cake, lemon pie and dulce de leche. In the future Vega plans to offer classes and parties after hours to help her younger clientele learn how to decorate cakes, and she will continue to sell her cupcakes wholesale to various businesses – which for now include Gimme 5 Café inside HIMG, Espresso Mojo at St. Mary’s Medical Center and Third & Ninth Deli-Market. But to Vega, as long as she’s still able to see her customers smile, she’ll know she’s exactly where she’s meant to be.
“There’s nothing greater than seeing people walk up to the cupcake display from far away, squinting their eyes to see what kind of cupcakes we have that day,” she says. “The closer they get, the bigger their smiles are. It’s the true joy of baking for me.”
