But she still had to pay the bills somehow.

About three years ago, Jen took a full-time job as a department assistant in business development at the Community Hospital of Los Gatos. She enjoyed her job but still constantly dreamed of cakes.

So the question for this 24-year-old became how she could turn her passion into something that she could make a living doing. The solution, at least for now, is hospital work by day and cake making by night.

Jen and her husband, Anthony, 25, have been living in Los Gatos for the past 3 ¹/2 years, since they were married. Their custom cake-making Los Gatos business, Jen's Cakes, became official on May 1, 2004. The couple rents and shares a kitchen—behind the back entrance of Mountain Charley's and Los Gatos Bar & Grill—with Creative Flavors Catering of Los Gatos.

But until the cake business gets off the ground, Jen still needs a day job for steady income. And in case the business flops, her husband, the baker, is earning his bachelor's degree in business administration from San José State University, attending as a full-time student.

There have been many sleepless nights balancing making cakes with her hospital position. Her day job includes starting new programs, developing business, organizing an annual blood drive, working on physician recruitment and taking pictures to document the hospital's history, among a long list of other responsibilities.

Jen's a pastry perfectionist and admits her temper can flair when her culinary treats don't turn out just right. Occasionally, on a night when she hasn't had enough sleep, Jen will dump a cake and start over from scratch.

Most recently, Jen created cakes for Tyeka Diggs and Matthew Leafgren's wedding on Aug. 15 in the East Bay. Not only did she decorate one large cake for the bride and groom to cut, but she fashioned 250 mini, three-tiered cakes for all of the guests. The maker behind this mass amount of miniature cakes says the best part of this extravaganza was being done.

"I like the end, when it's all over and I'm satisfied that it looks good and I've done something pretty," says Jen.

The 250 white, cream-cheese cakes were soaked in brandy and assembled in 4-inch, 3-inch and 2-inch stacked and frosted layers. They were decorated by Jen's steady hand with silver ribbon, red roses and Swiss dots. When the cakes had been transformed into pieces of art that looked like little mirror images of the larger cake, they were then transported—carefully—to the wedding.

The mother of the bride, Alice Diggs, saw the idea on The Oprah Winfrey Show and later in a bridal catalog and decided she wanted to do it for her daughter. She met Jen and Anthony at a bridal show, and the husband and wife said they could do the job.

"They are the nicest people you could meet," Alice says. "People raved. They were eating the cakes like crazy."

Jen spent more than 84 hours in the kitchen and squeezed in fewer than four hours of sleep the night before the wedding. She was exhausted the next day, but her 250 miniature sweets made the sleeplessness worthwhile.

Brenda Hammond, owner of Creative Flavors Catering, says the partnership of sharing the kitchen with Jen's Cakes has worked out successfully, since the catering service does many weddings but doesn't do desserts. The two businesses are also able to refer clients to each other. Hammond says she, too, remembers starting a business in her 20s and "being scared to death to make the leap." So she enjoys helping out the "darling couple."

"The quality of her cakes is just phenomenal," Hammond says, adding that they are easily able to share the same kitchen and not compete with each other.

A loan that was interest-free, at least for the first year, helped Jen buy the basic necessities to start the business. Baking pans of different sizes, a turntable, icing bags and tip sets were some of the first purchases.

"I accumulate as I go," Jen says.

She attended culinary school and received formal training and mentoring at a local bakery, and her portfolio now consists of hundreds of pictures and descriptions of gorgeous and tasty cakes for all special occasions—white, chocolate, lemon, poppy-seed, German chocolate, toasted almond, carrot cake, tres leches and more. The cakes also have all sorts of frostings, decor and flavors of filling between the layers, like strawberries, blueberries and blackberries. Still others are covered in fresh rose petals, fruit or flowers.

One of Jen's cakes looks like gift boxes stacked on top of each other, while another has grapes made of frosting and embellished with real fruit draping down its sides. One of her more galactic cakes is called "Cosmos" and includes fondant balls covered in shiny, luster dust.

Somewhere along the way, Anthony got roped into the process of baking, since Jen couldn't handle the growing number of orders alone.

"He got kind of pushed into it," Jen says. "He doesn't have any formal training except by me ... but I think he gets into it a little."

Anthony described baking a cake as a process of trial and error.

"My responsibilities are the things you taste—the frosting, the cake—but Jen can do it all," he says.

In the height of the summer wedding season, the husband and wife spend their evenings, especially on weekends and on Thursdays and Fridays, in the kitchen. When Jen isn't working at the hospital or making a cake, she offers complimentary consultation appointments for weddings, often on Sunday nights. A tasting includes five different combinations of cake and filling, presented professionally.

While some young entrepreneurs may find their age a hindrance, for Jen it's a plus because of the nature of her business. She can often relate to the brides-to-be because she's usually about the same age.

"People like the personal relationship with the person doing the cake," Jen says.

Jen's rates have been low in order to compete as a new business. And so far the business has been profitable—not by much, Jen says, but they are ahead. Most recently, Jen donated hundreds of individually wrapped pieces of cake to the Los Gatos Shakespeare Festival, which lasted 10 nights. She also provided cake for the Town of Los Gatos Chamber of Commerce's Business Person of the Year award dinner. Jen is a new member of the Chamber of Commerce and is finding ways to get her name out in the community by word of mouth.

Building a business comes with its fair share of mistakes and horror stories, Jen has learned. She recalls one cake she frosted light blue the night before a wedding. The next morning, the color had darkened in the refrigerator to a bright, Smurf blue. Jen says she had to start from scratch and completely re-ice the cake.

As they build momentum over the next few years, Jen and Anthony are hoping to offer other desserts, like white chocolate raspberry bars, crème brûlée, chocolate mousse and eclairs, along with treats from different cultures.

"You're always trying to do things to differentiate yourself, because cake is cake," Anthony says.

But the Kwapinskis wouldn't be as far along as they are without a solid support network. Jen says the hospital staff has been extremely supportive, letting her leave a few minutes early on a Friday if she's under a deadline to get a cake finished.

Their families and close friends pitch in with everything from cake assembly to delivery. A friend even donates a Toyota Matrix to them, suitable for multitiered-wedding-cake deliveries.

And, of course, Jen has her mother to thank for starting her career in cake making. The two of them took that cake-decorating class together way back in 1997—sending Jen off into the world of baking as a business.