ABOUT VANDEYCAKES
Amanda Vandervort is known in the soccer world as "Vandey." She is a sports-executive-turned-baker, and her custom-designed cakes have been featured at events, weddings, birthdays and corporate outings.
Amanda started baking cakes in 2014 and enrolled in a fondant decorating class in New York City. She loved it! Since then, she's been baking and decorating cakes for all kinds of special moments. Amanda loves making cakes that look like other things, tell a story, or hit just the right note of celebration. She specializes in creating unique designs for sporting events.
No challenge, design, or flavor is too difficult! All cakes are made fresh using the finest ingredients, including butter and cream from quality local producers, pure vanilla, and fresh produce from New York markets.
Amanda is a soccer player, coach and sports business executive with a 20-year track record of soccer leadership stretching across the youth, high school, college and professional game. She's currently the Vice President of Fan Engagement at Major League Soccer (MLS), the top-tier men's professional league in the United States. In 2016, Amanda served as the fifth female President of United Soccer Coaches (previously called the NSCAA), the largest non-profit coaches' association in the world. She was honored as a Sports Business Journal Game Changer in 2016, and has been a featured speaker at several top sports business conferences and events, including Leaders in Football, SXSW Sports, SoccerEx USA and the FIFA Women’s World Cup Symposiums in Germany and Canada.
You can learn more about Amanda's professional career at AmandaVandervort.com.
Amanda started baking cakes in 2014 and enrolled in a fondant decorating class in New York City. She loved it! Since then, she's been baking and decorating cakes for all kinds of special moments. Amanda loves making cakes that look like other things, tell a story, or hit just the right note of celebration. She specializes in creating unique designs for sporting events.
No challenge, design, or flavor is too difficult! All cakes are made fresh using the finest ingredients, including butter and cream from quality local producers, pure vanilla, and fresh produce from New York markets.
Amanda is a soccer player, coach and sports business executive with a 20-year track record of soccer leadership stretching across the youth, high school, college and professional game. She's currently the Vice President of Fan Engagement at Major League Soccer (MLS), the top-tier men's professional league in the United States. In 2016, Amanda served as the fifth female President of United Soccer Coaches (previously called the NSCAA), the largest non-profit coaches' association in the world. She was honored as a Sports Business Journal Game Changer in 2016, and has been a featured speaker at several top sports business conferences and events, including Leaders in Football, SXSW Sports, SoccerEx USA and the FIFA Women’s World Cup Symposiums in Germany and Canada.
You can learn more about Amanda's professional career at AmandaVandervort.com.
United: One Cake at a Time
Sports Business Journal / Feature Article - August 2018
For Amanda Vandervort, there’s a clear connection between two of the biggest passions in her life — working at Major League Soccer and baking cakes. “I like the ephemeral nature of cake; it reminds me a little bit of social media in that you can post a tweet, it’s out there, and then it’s gone. I love that I can create something that can bring people joy and happiness, and then it’s gone,” said Vandervort, who is MLS’s vice president of fan engagement. Vandervort, who rarely ate dessert and was not a baker, discovered her love of cake making about four years ago, when a friend invited her over for dinner and asked her to make something for dessert. She thought she would challenge herself by baking an almond cake and topping it with decorations made with marzipan. Vandervort enjoyed the decorating experience so much that she later enrolled in a six-hour cake class where she learned to make and roll edible icing, known as fondant. Almost immediately after, she cashed in wedding gift cards to outfit her kitchen with baking supplies. Since then, she has never made the same cake twice, producing dozens out of her home kitchen in Brooklyn. “I like bringing people together around special moments in their lives,” Vandervort said. “It allows us to bring a little bit of our outside lives and humanity into the office and celebrate each other as people, and to me that’s important.” |