Kansas Profile – Now That’s Rural: Cami SanRomani, Cami’s Cake Company
At a glance: Cami SanRomani started making cakes and cookies for friends and developed it into a business. Since then, she has won a Food Network show; appeared on national television four times; made cakes for rockstar birthday parties, the Major League Baseball All-Star game, and a Guinness world record edible car; and shipped cookies coast-to-coast.
More information: Ron Wilson, rwilson@ksu.edu, 785-532-7690
Photos: Ron Wilson | Cami SanRomani | Cami's Cakes Race Car
Website: Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development
Aug. 5, 2026
By Ron Wilson, director of the Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University
Let’s go to pop star Taylor Swift’s birthday party. What, you weren’t invited?!
Well, okay, I wasn’t either. But I do know that the person who prepared the birthday cake for this special event was a young woman who has built a remarkable cake and cookie business in rural Kansas.
Cami SanRomani is the founder, owner, and operator of Cami’s Cake Company. She grew up in Council Grove. “We were a food-centered family although mom cooked because she had to, not because she loved it,” SanRomani said.
At right: Cami SanRomani | Download this photo
“I learned I could get out of doing dishes if I helped prepare the food,” she said with a smile.
While in high school, Cami got a job at the historic Hays House restaurant. “My friends were waitresses, but I got a job in the kitchen,” SanRomani said. The restaurant owner at the time became a mentor. “That’s where I fell in love with the nitty-gritty details of cooking.”
She went to college but struggled. When she took culinary classes at Johnson County Community College, she began to believe that this could be a real career.
She made cakes and cookies for friends. “In 2010, Cami’s cakes started in my little apartment in Lawrence,” SanRomani said. The business grew. By 2017, she and her husband had three little kids and needed more space.
“My parents told me there was a house for sale in Council Grove, catty corner to my childhood home,” SanRomani said. It was a fixer-upper so they bought it for a bargain price.
It took them two years to renovate. “I took an order for 14,000 cookies and that paid for the new roof that we needed,” SanRomani said.
In 2021, she bought a building in downtown Council Grove. That building now serves as her workspace and shipping area – and boy, does she ship.
Cami’s Cake Company has shipped products across the nation and as far away as New Zealand and Singapore. Social media has allowed her to reach customers across the country. She also won a baking contest on the Food Network.
She still does local orders for cakes, wedding cakes and cookies as well as big national clients and other special occasions. When the company that created Pokemon Go sold, they had SanRomani make special cookies to mark the occasion and sent them all over the world.
A party planner contacted her about making a birthday cake for the son of Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes. It went so well that she was asked to make the birthday cake for Taylor Swift (thanks to her husband and Chiefs' tight end Travis Kelce, Taylor Swift is essentially a member of the Chiefs family now).
SanRomani has made products for a baseball goods supply company. That led to her making cookies for a Major League Baseball All-Star game, which she attended with her family – extra fun for her husband, who is a teacher and coach.
Another friend she works with had an idea for a potential Guinness World Records claim. He built a car frame from aircraft aluminum, added wheels and then had SanRomani piece together a giant cake to go on it. Ninety percent of the car was cake. They followed the Guinness rules and inspections, which were very stringent.
In the end, they were able to claim two world records: The fastest edible vehicle and the longest distance traveled by an edible vehicle.
At right: Cami's Cake Race Car | Download this photo
SanRomani has been on national television four times and made cookies for national chains such as McDonalds, KFC, Papa Johns, T-Mobile, Target, Google and more.
Of these companies, she said: “Nobody knows where I live - and nobody cares. They just want customer service, quality and reliability. (With those things) you can have a crazy dream and make it happen from a rural setting.”
It’s great to find this business in a rural community such as Council Grove, population 2,140 people. Now, that’s rural.
For more information, see www.camiscakeco.com.
It’s time to leave Taylor Swift’s birthday party where the cake was prepared by this Kansas ruralpreneur. We salute Cami SanRomani for making a difference with culinary entrepreneurship.
It’s not been just a piece of cake.
Audio and text files of Kansas Profiles are available at www.huckboydinstitute.org/kansas-profiles. For more information about the Huck Boyd Institute, interested persons can visit www.huckboydinstitute.org.
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