When handed lemons, Amy Padilla made lemon cupcakes

The Kona Kahlua is a sight to behold. A chocolate cupcake filled with Kahlua and topped with buttercream icing and chocolate shavings, the baked treat eats like devouring a Starbucks-stylized coffee drink in cupcake form.

It's also the spongy, chocolate flavored launch pad for Round Rock resident Amy Padilla and Bellissimo Bakery.

It was just over three years ago that Padilla was an account executive for an online education company. Like many career-change stories in this day and age, Padilla's story started when she was laid off.

When life handed Padilla lemons, she decided to make Lemon Drop cupcakes ($33 per dozen from Bellissimo Bakery).

"I kind of had a lot of time on my hands, so I started baking more for friends and family, for birthdays, holidays, celebrations and stuff," she said.

Really, Padilla's sweet tooth for baking began when she was a child. As the youngest of three girls, Padilla learned to bake early on, her mother helping her until she was 11 or 12 years old and was allowed to do so on her own. Beyond the guidance her mother gave her, Padilla had no other training.

Not as if anyone could tell. In 2009, at the suggestion of a friend, Padilla entered her Kona Kahlua cupcake into the Cupcake Smackdown in the amateur division for the best chocolate cupcake. As she was preparing to leave the contest, she heard her name called again. She wasn't sure what award she was on stage for, but she smiled and accepted it nonetheless.

It wasn't until she stepped off stage that she found out she had won best overall cupcake, a category that included even professional bakers.

"Then I thought, 'maybe there is something to this, that it was more than my friends and family being nice,'" she recalled thinking at the time.

Thus started Bellissimo Bakery.

Today, Padilla has a menu of 30 cupcakes and dozens of flavors, fillings and toppings customers can mix and match. She also makes cakes, cookies and pies by request, but the bread and butter of her bakery is still cupcakes.

Still, she takes great pride in her confections despite never setting foot in a culinary school of any kind.

"I make sure what goes out the door, I would enter it into a contest," she said, relating the story of redoing a wedding cake just because it didn't quite look right to her, even though her assistant couldn't tell the difference.

Still, she hopes one day to go to school to be professionally trained and has considered opening up a storefront, so long as it doesn't take the fun out of doing what she loves.

"I would hate to find myself baking just to cover the overhead. I think it would take the joy out of it," Padilla said. "I really enjoy doing it, and as long as I enjoy doing it and it remains something that is fun and exciting to me, then I would love to have a storefront."

Bellissimo Bakery caters events such as weddings, birthdays and parties.

To place an order of a minimum dozen cupcakes, visit www.bellissimobakery.com, email [email protected] or call 351-5233.

A full menu including 30 cupcakes and dozens of flavors, fillings and icings can be found at www.bellissimobakery.com/Menu.html