Mellissa Carter-Winkler - a magician in the kitchen

WINTER GARDEN Cake pops and cookies from The Wizard of Pies have disappeared from their regular spots around Winter Garden, but that doesn’t mean the wizard behind the goodies has stopped baking.

Mellissa Carter-Winkler, owner of Wizard of Pies, has simply decided to take her business in a new direction. 

Instead of distributing her baked goods to various shops around town, Carter-Winkler has decided to run her bakery from the comforts of her home.

Carter-Winkler got her start in baking as a child and fell in love with it from the first day she held a spatula.

“I have not had any professional training at all; I’m all self-taught,” she said.

Carter-Winlker launched The Wizard of Pies nearly two years ago as a way to share her love of baked goods with others.

“I wanted something I could get into that I loved to do,” she said. “I wanted to be my own boss and not work for anybody else.”

Although distributing her baked goods to various stores around Winter Garden was proving to be successful, it was also time-consuming for Carter-Winkler, a mother of two. Wanting to spend more time with her children before they start school, Carter-Winkler decided to operate her bakery entirely from home.

“I needed time to focus on my kids,” she said.

While Carter-Winkler can bake just about anything - from pies and brownies to cakes and cookies - some of the most popular items are cakes and cake pops. She has nearly 20 different cake flavors that customers can choose from, including a vanilla cream and a triple chocolate cake with chocolate ganache frosting.

“I can do pretty much anything,” Carter-Winkler said.

Of all the things she whips up in her kitchen, her favorite things to bake are what she calls old-fashioned baked goods.

“My favorite thing is to do things like good, old-fashioned buttercream cakes, lemon squares, brownies and cookies,” she said.

Her mystery boxes are also popular. Each box features a theme, such as “Wizard of Oz” or “Alice in Wonderland,” with a random assortment of baked goods reflecting the box’s theme.

“I really enjoy doing those because I have so many things that I put into each box, and people have so much fun with them,” She said.

Her dream is to one day open a brick-and-mortar bakery.

“My husband and I want to do a deli and bakery with fresh-baked breads with meats on one side and on the other side we want to do desserts,” she said.

Until then, Carter-Winkler fills orders for cakes and other baked goods at night after her children are asleep in bed.

And once a week, she has a baking class with her kids.

“They’re learning,” she said. “They get really, really excited about it.”

Contact Brittany Gaines at [email protected].