Lubbock baker seeks to serve community after overcoming adversity

LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – Every day, Makaly Peña can be found at home, baking and decorating treats for her business – Kaly’s Cakes and Sweets.

Years ago, she worked at Amigos decorating cakes and discovered she had real talent.

“It’s a lot of work,” Peña said. “You know, in the introduction to Full House, and then there are the different characters? There is a TikTok where you meet the baker, the decorator, the owner, the manager, the cleaning lady. It’s all me.

However, life took her elsewhere and she and her husband moved to Colorado.

Three years later, in 2020, the couple found out they were having their first child and decided to move back to Lubbock to be closer to family and restart their business.

However, in January 2021, during a regular ultrasound, Peña learned that she had miscarried at 14 weeks.

“The baby was almost gone, but my body wasn’t accepting it and didn’t know it,” she said. “It was a strange feeling of dissociation because my body couldn’t keep up with what was really happening or my mental state couldn’t keep up with what was really happening. She wasn’t there even though I felt like she was still there.

After a long period of mourning, she was able to get back on her feet.

A customer contacted her to make her a cake and it made her want to do it again.

In July 2022, Peña discovered she was pregnant with twin girls, Florence and Farrah. Florence was monitored early on due to a problem with her cord, but one day it was discovered that Florence was still there, but Farrah was not.

In January 2023, Florence was born, but due to complications she spent the next two months in the hospital. Yet another obstacle to keeping the business afloat and the cohesion of the family.

“We said, ‘What could we do?’ “and in the end, after praying, our answer seemed to us that there was no answer except to persevere in our affairs,” she said. “I just felt like it was the right thing.” We asked ourselves, “Why should we uproot everything just so that our end goal is to go back to this?” »

She thanks the community for helping her get through this time. In June, she was told she had to leave her home, forcing her to work 36 hours straight over Father’s Day weekend.

The orders arrived and the Peña family was able to move into a better, more welcoming home.

As for her future goals, she says she doesn’t have any because she wants to live in the moment.

“Essentially, after losing my daughters,” she said, “when you feel like you can plan something that’s supposed to happen, it’s just supposed to happen, you’re supposed to have it, and then you don’t. You just learn to live every day and enjoy the things you do every day. So, I don’t have any goals for the future and I don’t have any expectations for the future. I just know that today God gave me life, so I made a cake.

Copyright 2024 KCBD. All rights reserved.