Joel Reed has spent most of his 15-year nursing career working in emergency rooms. He was a travel nurse in California and Florida before taking a job as a resource nurse in the emergency department at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta in 2003.

"It changed my nursing. The adult and children's emergency rooms are as different as night and day," said Reed, RN. "I had been doing a lot of cardiac and critical care for mostly geriatric patients in Florida, and now it's vomiting or breathing problems and lots of chronically ill children.

Photos by BARRY WILLIAMS/Special (ENLARGE)

Joel Reed created these two cakes for an Indian wedding. The one on the left (and in photo below) is a gift cake with fondant icing and a gum paste bow. The one on the right has flowers and a crown made from gum paste.

(ENLARGE)

Joel Reed's intricate designs turn cakes into works of art. 'I'm a perfectionist, so I'll work on something for a long time. It's totally different than health care — more like doing artwork.'

"Adults are always serious and usually at their worst in the emergency room. Here, the Cartoon Network is in every room, and, no matter how sick they are, children want to play a little. Kids are fun."

Reed enjoys the pace of emergency care.

"I like the quick in-and-out. The variety and flow of patients and the critical-care nursing are more exciting to me," he said. "I'm not sure I could function on a regular floor. I've never done it."

Yet, two years ago, when he cut back his schedule to part-time work on weekends, Reed wanted to do something different.

"I call it my midlife crisis. I was looking for something new. So I started baking," he said.

He has taken classes at the International School of Sugar and Confectionary Arts in Norcross, learning from one of the world's most-renowned "sugar artists," Nicholas Lodge.

Reed makes a tasty, white-chocolate cake, but his real love is decorating. His specialty is working with gum paste, "a stretchy kind of sugar paste that you mold into shapes [such as flowers] and color with powdered food color. It hardens and is combined with fondant to decorate the tops of cakes."

Special occasions offer Reed the chance to show off his work.

"For two years, I have practiced my skills among family and friends," he said. "Anytime anyone needed a celebration cake for a birthday, wedding or baby shower, I'd make it, and I've had nothing but positive feedback since I started. Of course, that fuels me on even more."

For his niece's birthday, Reed worked for three weeks on a 3-foot Cinderella cake. "Each of the five layers was a different shape, and the decorations were iridescent and art deco in style — and very costly," Reed said. "I made a slipper for the top.

"It was a gift, but I also did it for me. I combined everything I'd learned in two years, because I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it."

His last order was for a three-tier wedding cake and 20 individual cakes for a wedding shower.

"Cakes are fun, and they taste good, but I'm in cake-withdrawal at the moment and not taking orders," he said.

After investing in a growing collection of cake-baking and decorating equipment, Reed has run out of room to work in his one-bedroom condo. He's finding a larger kitchen and creating a Web site so that he can start a side business in January.

"Cake baking is my artistic outlet," he said. "I started college (at Belmont University in Nashville) as a piano and organ performing major before I switched to nursing.

"Starting with a white-iced cake is like working on a blank canvas. I'm a perfectionist, so I'll work on something for a long time. It's totally different than health care — more like doing artwork."