Like many of us, Ashley Huston knew she wasn’t meant for a cubicle.
Despite earning a finance degree and having a clear path to financial stability, she kept gravitating back to what made her happiest, and that was creating beautiful, delicious cakes that brought joy to people’s biggest moments.
Six months after opening DreamWorld Bakes‘ first brick-and-mortar location in Philadelphia, Huston is seeing the fruits of her labor pay off. Slow and steady, each month has been better than the last, and the community response has been overwhelming.
“I get all these people coming in and they’re like, ‘I see what you’re doing, and I love your food, I love what you guys are doing here,’” Huston says from her bakery at 2400 Coral Street, which I was able to check out firsthand. “When we get these beautiful reviews like, ‘My grandmother loved this cake,’ or, ‘This was our dream cake,’ and it was like a hit at the wedding, those make it all worth it.”
Her journey started in her grandmother’s North Philly kitchen, where young Ashley was always experimenting with flavors. “I tried to reinvent the peanut butter and jelly,” she laughs. “I was just always trying to learn how flavors went together.”
That curiosity led to making birthday cakes for high school friends, then college friends, then their families. After graduation and a stint with the Peace Corps in Tanzania, Huston found herself working as a line cook while baking remained her passion project.
“I would make my friend’s birthday cakes. Their friends and family wanted birthday cakes, and it kind of just grew into this little side hustle,” she explains.
The side hustle became DreamWorld Bakes, and in January 2025, Huston made the leap to her first permanent location. The decision required courage, especially coming from a family that emphasized stability.
“My family growing up, they were like, ‘Do something safe.’ That’s why I went to school for finance, and then I knew I couldn’t do this. After I graduated, it wasn’t for me,” she says. “It’s okay to have a dream. It’s okay to want to take the safe route.”
What makes DreamWorld special goes beyond the Instagram-worthy aesthetics. Huston’s cakes look like they belong in a fairy tale, and quite frankly could be considered art themselves. Specializing in pastels, flowers, and whimsical designs, they really would be considered “a dream world,” but if you’ve ever tried one of her desserts you know this dream is truly a reality.
“You can get a good looking cake anywhere, everyone can make a good looking cake,” Huston says. “I really focus on flavors and how do we get the maximum flavor out of something and what goes well with that.”
The bakery’s bestseller? A pastel dream called the Baby Spice cake, which is a spiced cardamom base layered with passionfruit curd, mango-chai mousse, and a whipped tonka bean buttercream that customers can’t stop talking about. I didn’t get to try it this time, but it’s already on my list for a return trip. “It’s our number one. Everyone always wants it,” she says.
Huston draws inspiration from everywhere, including her grandmother’s recipes, her travels, seasonal ingredients. “I use a lot of cardamom,” she admits. “It’s a beautiful flavor and it’s very aromatic. I like to kind of cross that line too with my desserts, what’s sweet, what’s savory, how they fuse together.”
This approach caught the attention of some major players. Last February, Huston appeared on the Sherri Shepherd Show during a Black History Month spotlight on small businesses. Patti LaBelle’s assistant happened to be watching.
“She’s like, ‘Oh, my God, this girl’s from Philly. You got to get this to work out somehow.’ And we did,” Huston recalls. The collaboration resulted in her creating Patti LaBelle’s 80th birthday cake, which was a milestone for Huston that still feels surreal. “I couldn’t believe I was standing in Patti LaBelle’s kitchen.”
It was this one moment that shifted the entire trajectory of her business. I mean, when thee queen Patti calls, what else really matters? Still, Huston couldn’t ignore the fact that when she looked around the baking world, she didn’t see many women who looked like her. “If you think about all the big names in baking and pastry in the country or all over the world, there’s not a lot of Black women in there,” she observes. “I used to look that limit in me, like I can’t find my space in this scene, but I kind of just dug my way in, no matter what.”
Now she’s part of Philadelphia’s evolving food scene, which is finally gaining the national recognition it deserves. “I think we’re finally getting recognition for that, like within the past 15 years we have grown. I think even Michelin now is coming in, and they would never have considered us a long time ago.”
The business continues to grow steadily. Many customers from her original West Philadelphia kitchen operation still travel to the new location, and word-of-mouth continues to bring new faces through the door.
“Every month that we make it through, we do a little bit better than the month we did previously,” Huston says. “So that kind of reassures me.”
And that’s no small feat for a business owner, especially in this economy and especially in the hospitality industry. Everything Ashley knows about flavor — and resilience — started in her grandmother’s kitchen in North Philly. Growing up under the family matriarch, Huston learned that cooking was about necessity and love. “I grew up in a house of cooks. People who cooked because we had to — out of necessity. We eat good because we get what we can, and we make it taste as good as we can.”
Looking ahead, Huston has big plans. She’s considering expanding into restaurants and even hospitality, “I would love to have a BNB [bed and breakfast] or something like that, maybe with a bakery under it.” But for now, she’s focused on growing DreamWorld and inspiring others to chase their dreams.
“At the end of the day, I want young Black women and also young Black boys to be able to look at where I came from. I grew up in North Philly, and that did not limit me. If you have a dream to do something, find a way to do it and keep doing it.”
While Huston’s journey hasn’t always been easy (which she’ll be the first to admit), her story is a testimony that sometimes the sweetest success comes from having the courage to follow your passion, even when it means abandoning the “safe” path. And well… we’ll eat some cake to that.