Leigh Henderson

She/Her/Hers

Cake artist, pumpkin carver, theater artist, horror / sci-fi enthusiast, proud auntie, general builder and tinkerer

I’m told that when I was little one of my favorite phrases was “Do it myself!” which I’m sure was horrendously annoying to my parents when they just wanted to zip my jacket for me and get me out of the house. I still like to do things myself, even when I still don’t actually know how to do them.

I started making cakes in 2000, purely on a whim because it occurred to me that I could put marzipan dinosaurs in the center of a bundt cake. Since then, I’ve taken a bunch of classes at the Wilton School (which, incidentally, are a lot of fun) but mostly I’ve taught myself by reading cake decorating books (I recommend anything by Colette Peters) and by experimenting. I started carving pumpkins around the same time, when I discovered the Pumpkinmasters carving contest and thought it would be fun to enter. I mostly focused on jack-o-lanterns until I was cast as a cake artist on Halloween Wars and discovered the world of 3-D pumpkin sculpting.

I have a background working in the theater, mostly as a scenic designer, lighting designer, and scenic artist, which I think is why I naturally love to incorporate light and movement into my work and why I tend to focus on strong characters and clear stories. I also have a life-long love of horror, so many of my best-known cakes, in particular, look like props from horror movies. My most infamous cake is the Thorax Cake (grossing out the internets since 2003), which has been published in Make Magazine, FHM, and Ripley’s Believe it Or Not!’s Seeing is Believing. 

Find me on Twitter and Instagram @LeighAnnCakes or see more of my theater work at leighannhenderson.com.