Gloria Olson is often called "Cake Lady," but she prefers "cake decorator."

With single cakes sometimes requiring 15 hours of artwork, painting gold leaf patterns onto perfectly smooth fondant, her requested title seems reasonable.

Then again, you can see how customers who visit Glorious Desserts, her home-based business in Des Moines, Iowa, for a consultation might try the simpler approach.

Rather than vases or knickknacks, her front room is adorned with cakes, some of them several layers — and feet — in height.

And not just simple white wedding cakes, but the sort of "Wow!" pastries usually seen in bridal magazines or on the Food Network's "Ace of Cakes," where baker Duff Goldman creates "extreme cakes."

" 'Ace of Cakes' is a great show because he breaks down the stereotype of a cake decorator being 75 years old and having that grandma look," Olson says. "He's closer to what we really are. I'm 37 years old and run my bakery with humor and laughter."

Prices start at about $25 for birthday cakes. Wedding cakes are typically in the $400 to $600 range, although price depends on the number of servings and the design chosen.

The most expensive cake she's created was $4,615.

Olson once directed high school chorus and spent her summers singing professionally in Europe.

Mixing performance and teaching exhausted her, so in 1998 she decided to take a summer off and try a stress-free job.

She got a position decorating birthday cakes at a local bakery, copying patterns from birthday napkins.

Olson, who had entered college as an art major, didn't have any problems executing the frosted drawings.

From there, she baked a wedding cake for friends, then pursued corporate projects.

"I thought, 'I think I can do cakes,' " she says.

But she didn't just want to create traditional buttercream-frosted cakes in white. To succeed, Olson sensed she had to be able to deliver the sort of cakes brides see in magazines.

So she crisscrossed the nation taking classes from the top cake artists, picking up fondant techniques and learning about molding chocolate and pulling sugar into decorative art. She studied cakes, cookies and other desserts.

In 2002, Olson resigned from teaching and started her business. She installed a full commercial kitchen in her basement.

She says engaged couples are more eager to think of their cake as a work of art.

"For one cake, I took apart a chandelier (to decorate the space between layers)," she says. "The more creative you can be and tailor to their tastes, the more satisfied they are and the more unique the cake is."

More couples are asking for cakes with askew layers and wild colors. A crooked cake in fondant takes nine hours to make, not counting the time to make flowers and bows.

And last year, during her busy season from April to December, she made one a week.

Although Olson employs several part-time workers, she performs all the frosting and cake decorating.