About Us

Hi!

We are Darin and Diane Simmons, the owners of Cake Connection.  Diane was introduced to cake decorating as a child when visiting her grandparents, and then came back to it as an adult when she signed up for local cake decorating courses which led to her beginning to design wedding cakes in 1992.  We met in 1993... got married in 1995... and have two (gray-hair causing... ha ha) teenage children and a dog.  We had a licensed kitchen attached to the house while the kids were younger.  In 2007, we jumped in head first to follow Diane's dream and opened a retail cake and candy supply shop which is now a flourishing family business.  We are proud to be the area's largest supply shop serving the Jackson, Lansing and Battle Creek area. 

In recent years, Diane developed a new method for creating gelatin flowers and we found ourselves hurled into the world of designing and manufacturing.   She has written two books on this technique, and travels throughout the country teaching and promoting this artform.  She also produced an instructional video in specialty gumpaste techniques, as well as having instructional how-to articles published in American Cake Decorating magazine and the ICES International publication.  Internationally, she has had cakes featured in British, Australian, and Italian magazines.  In competitions, Diane has been awarded several Gold medals, Best of Division Award, as well as special top honor awards. Her proudest accomplishment in competitions came in 2006 at the National Wedding Cake Competition (held annually in Tulsa, OK and dubbed the "Superbowl of Cake Competitions") where she was incredibly honored to be awarded 2nd Runner-Up her first time entering.  Following this event, she was also invited to compete in a Food Network live competition.  As much as we would love to still be providing all the cakes requested... we found that Diane still needs to sleep a few hours every night (or she gets a little cranky!) so she needed to 'lighten the load' a bit.   While it was a hard decision to make, the decision was made in 2011 to no longer accept cake orders as Diane is quite busy traveling to teach and promote new product lines... and also managing the day to day operations of the retail storefront (in her spare time... :)

Darin comes from a manufacturing background, and when his company eliminated his entire division, we made the decision to follow the "American Dream" and made this a 100% family business.  He began helping out with the storefront and shipping online orders while Diane was traveling and teaching more.  Once we expanded our wholesale division, Darin was "sent to the basement!" and now manages and handles all the product packaging and shipping for that area. 

Our shop is located in Jackson, just south of I-94 (click here for driving directions.)