Meet Allie Cat Bakes, TikTok’s Favorite “Investment Baker”
How Allison Sheehan scored Goop, LoveShack Fancy, and Roller Rabbit as customers of her cake business, all while working a corporate 9-5.
By 8:00 am, while most of us are still in deep REM, Allison Sheehan has lived a full life. By 5:00 am, she’s up and headed out the door for her morning workout, typically at Solidcore or Corepower. By 7:00 am, she’s back in her lower Manhattan apartment decorating a customer’s cake for pickup. This can involve anything from whipping up buttercream frosting to hand-placing decorative pearls. By 7:50 am, she’s dressed and out the door again, this time to start her full day of work as a financial analyst.
On TikTok, where Sheehan, better known as @alliecatbakess, documents this all to her over 15,000 followers, most of her vlogs start the same: “Welcome back to another morning in the life of an ‘investment baker’, which means someone who works at an investment bank, but also makes cakes.”
Sheehan is part of a growing class of creators on TikTok who use the platform to show what it’s like to work a corporate job in New York City. While most of these content creators focus on the breakdown of their workday, Sheehan’s 5:00 am morning routine, where she works on her side hustle of cake-baking, is the star of the show.
“I’m a strong believer that if you really care about something, you’ll make time,” she says.
Despite the nearly twelve-hour workday, Sheehan says she never thought she was special for pursuing a side hustle until her family and friends pointed out that her routine was extremely unusual. It was this realization that led Sheehan to start creating content based on her cake baking.
“It got me thinking, in a time of influencing when there’s a sudden influx of people sharing their day-to-day, their outfits, and where they go to eat, I felt like there was room for a creator that was doing both,” she says. “I wanted to create a platform that was kind of the intersection between a hobby and a corporate lifestyle.”
For Sheehan, whose aunt is a cookbook author and whose sister is in culinary school, being in the kitchen has always felt natural. Still, it wasn’t until she was in college, a time when many entrepreneurs find their start, that she decided to take her love of baking seriously.
Sheehan attended Southern Methodist University, a top-ranked private school in Dallas, Texas, where she says girls took their birthdays “very, very seriously”, but struggled to find bakeries that weren’t constantly sold out or overpriced.
“Everyone needed beautiful cakes, but no one knew where to get them,” says Sheehan. “That’s the moment I realized that there was a gap in the market I could fill.”
Three years after graduating from SMU, where her customers were mainly friends and other college students, Sheehan’s cake-baking business has blossomed, now counting popular lifestyle and retail brands like Goop and LoveShackFancy as customers. Her cakes, while custom-made for every client, all have a similar design pattern– frilly, feminine, and color-saturated, often figured into a subtle heart shape.
“I never thought in a million years that I would be making cakes for these brands,” says Sheehan.
Despite her disbelief, that doesn’t mean she hasn’t thought about (and manifested) her goals for her company, Allie Cat Bakes. While out for drinks with a friend, Sheehan was asked who her dream client would be. The answer was Roller Rabbit, a well-known preppy, Lilly Pullitzer-esque clothing brand known for its colorful pajamas. Sheehan’s friend encouraged her to shoot her shot and offer to bake them a cake for free in exchange for exposure.
“I was like, ‘You know what? You’re so right, I’m gonna do that,’” says Sheehan. “The next day, I opened my phone, and they had just reached out to me without me even doing anything. So, I spoke it into existence, I guess.”
Along with her vlogs, some of Sheehan’s most engaged with content are her “What I Eat in a Week” videos, where she shows a more unfiltered side of her daily routine. Her food roundups include plenty of tinned fish, Dijon mustard, and porridge— and unlike her beautiful cakes, there’s nothing picturesque about these meals. “It’s like medieval ghoul good” and “My dog would go crazy for this” are just a few of the comments reacting to Sheehan’s palette.
Despite the strong responses, Sheehan sharing her daily eats is a part of her effort to keep it real online. After noticing much of the meal-prepping content on TikTok was highly stylized, she wanted to share a more realistic depiction of what it’s like to feed yourself while also working a full-time job.
“When you see meal preppers on TikTok, they're using aesthetic glass Tupperware that fits perfectly together, ingredients from the farm stand, and tasting the rainbow. Everything's organic and beautiful and almost unreal,” said Sheehan.
“I know for a fact that 90% of America is grabbing an old chicken sausage from their fridge and some carrots and bringing them to work… I was like, let's just bring some realness to this platform and post what we're actually eating.”
Clearly, Sheehan’s authenticity is only an aid to her growing brand, and by extension, her cake business. This past February, she rented a kitchen space on the Lower East Side to host her first-ever cake-decorating workshop, which was Valentine’s Day-themed and promptly sold out. Along with wanting to teach more classes, she also hopes to one day open up a physical storefront for her business and develop a boxed cake mix.
“I'm always studying the baking aisle and seeing where there are gaps in the space,” she says. “I want to come out with one that's true to my brand, which is really rich, decadent, delicious—everything that you would want in a cake.”
While Sheehan’s career success is clearly the result of grit, she’s still a big believer in speaking things into existence. “No goal is unattainable,” she says. “If you tell yourself you can do something, it will increase the chances of it happening.”
On TikTok, where Sheehan, better known as @alliecatbakess, documents this all to her over 15,000 followers, most of her vlogs start the same: “Welcome back to another morning in the life of an ‘investment baker’, which means someone who works at an investment bank, but also makes cakes.”
Sheehan is part of a growing class of creators on TikTok who use the platform to show what it’s like to work a corporate job in New York City. While most of these content creators focus on the breakdown of their workday, Sheehan’s 5:00 am morning routine, where she works on her side hustle of cake-baking, is the star of the show.
“I’m a strong believer that if you really care about something, you’ll make time,” she says.
Despite the nearly twelve-hour workday, Sheehan says she never thought she was special for pursuing a side hustle until her family and friends pointed out that her routine was extremely unusual. It was this realization that led Sheehan to start creating content based on her cake baking.
“It got me thinking, in a time of influencing when there’s a sudden influx of people sharing their day-to-day, their outfits, and where they go to eat, I felt like there was room for a creator that was doing both,” she says. “I wanted to create a platform that was kind of the intersection between a hobby and a corporate lifestyle.”
For Sheehan, whose aunt is a cookbook author and whose sister is in culinary school, being in the kitchen has always felt natural. Still, it wasn’t until she was in college, a time when many entrepreneurs find their start, that she decided to take her love of baking seriously.
Sheehan attended Southern Methodist University, a top-ranked private school in Dallas, Texas, where she says girls took their birthdays “very, very seriously”, but struggled to find bakeries that weren’t constantly sold out or overpriced.
“Everyone needed beautiful cakes, but no one knew where to get them,” says Sheehan. “That’s the moment I realized that there was a gap in the market I could fill.”
Three years after graduating from SMU, where her customers were mainly friends and other college students, Sheehan’s cake-baking business has blossomed, now counting popular lifestyle and retail brands like Goop and LoveShackFancy as customers. Her cakes, while custom-made for every client, all have a similar design pattern– frilly, feminine, and color-saturated, often figured into a subtle heart shape.
“I never thought in a million years that I would be making cakes for these brands,” says Sheehan.
Despite her disbelief, that doesn’t mean she hasn’t thought about (and manifested) her goals for her company, Allie Cat Bakes. While out for drinks with a friend, Sheehan was asked who her dream client would be. The answer was Roller Rabbit, a well-known preppy, Lilly Pullitzer-esque clothing brand known for its colorful pajamas. Sheehan’s friend encouraged her to shoot her shot and offer to bake them a cake for free in exchange for exposure.
“I was like, ‘You know what? You’re so right, I’m gonna do that,’” says Sheehan. “The next day, I opened my phone, and they had just reached out to me without me even doing anything. So, I spoke it into existence, I guess.”
Along with her vlogs, some of Sheehan’s most engaged with content are her “What I Eat in a Week” videos, where she shows a more unfiltered side of her daily routine. Her food roundups include plenty of tinned fish, Dijon mustard, and porridge— and unlike her beautiful cakes, there’s nothing picturesque about these meals. “It’s like medieval ghoul good” and “My dog would go crazy for this” are just a few of the comments reacting to Sheehan’s palette.
@alliecatcakess Replying to @gubpugmug #greenscreen ♬ original sound - alliecatcakess
Despite the strong responses, Sheehan sharing her daily eats is a part of her effort to keep it real online. After noticing much of the meal-prepping content on TikTok was highly stylized, she wanted to share a more realistic depiction of what it’s like to feed yourself while also working a full-time job.
“When you see meal preppers on TikTok, they're using aesthetic glass Tupperware that fits perfectly together, ingredients from the farm stand, and tasting the rainbow. Everything's organic and beautiful and almost unreal,” said Sheehan.
“I know for a fact that 90% of America is grabbing an old chicken sausage from their fridge and some carrots and bringing them to work… I was like, let's just bring some realness to this platform and post what we're actually eating.”
Clearly, Sheehan’s authenticity is only an aid to her growing brand, and by extension, her cake business. This past February, she rented a kitchen space on the Lower East Side to host her first-ever cake-decorating workshop, which was Valentine’s Day-themed and promptly sold out. Along with wanting to teach more classes, she also hopes to one day open up a physical storefront for her business and develop a boxed cake mix.
“I'm always studying the baking aisle and seeing where there are gaps in the space,” she says. “I want to come out with one that's true to my brand, which is really rich, decadent, delicious—everything that you would want in a cake.”
While Sheehan’s career success is clearly the result of grit, she’s still a big believer in speaking things into existence. “No goal is unattainable,” she says. “If you tell yourself you can do something, it will increase the chances of it happening.”