Sculpted Cake Award Winner, American Cake Awards 2020 

 

Named Top Ten Cake Artist , USA, Cake Masters Magazine 2018

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Named Top Ten Cake Artist, North America, Dessert Professional Magazine 2015

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Finalist ,Cake Masters Awards, Novelty Cake Artist , 2014

 

About the artist:

 I accidentally got into cakes. No, not in a pratfall ,covered in buttercream kind of way, but in a confluence of events kind of way. For as long as I can recall, I've always been artistic. I'd draw on whatever was handy, even paper towels. In retrospect, it would have been cheaper to just buy me a sketchbook, but c'est la vie. Naturally, after years of honing my napkin art skills, I had hoped to parlay that into a career.

 

 The term “starving artist” , you might be interested to learn , is not just an expression. Basically, I turned myself into “artist for hire”, doing everything from murals to portraiture, but knew i'd need to find steady work lest I actually starved. My brother-in-law pulled some strings to get me a job in a local market. Who knew there was a velvet rope in the grocery store biz? There I did basic deli/ bakery clerk duties, slicing up lunch meats and learning the subtle differences between thin sliced and shaved. I was now honing my deli skills which may or may not have been an improvement over the napkin art era. All the while, I was still pursuing my creative endeavors whenever I had the chance. Fortunately , I talk a lot and my boss knew this. One day she asked if I would take over for the retiring cake decorator. I had only made one cake in my life prior to this, a Victorian house cake in grade 5 that met with an unceremonious end (there was a knee involved and some tears, oh were there tears!). I was willing to learn, though. After a week of “observing” , I made my first cake which was then sold, technically making me an instant “professional”. I am eternally grateful that it was 1989 and I didn't have a camera at that time.

 Years passed and this unlikely career had become a part of who I was, despite numerous attempts to leave.

 

 In 2004, still making cakes (now in an “erotic” bakery) and plotting my escape plan, I decided to finally embrace the medium but on my terms. In 2005, I launched my own business and launched the website debbiedoescakes.net. My focus was exclusively on sculpted cakes.

  

 I submitted my site for promotion to a very well respected pioneer in the field. She loved my work but had one piece of advice for me: “please remove the dead rat cake image”. I knew that if a cake could spark such aversion I was on to something.

 

 Since then, I have embraced those subjects that the sage decorator warned against, and in doing so have created a niche for myself . In 2012 I released my first book “Twisted Cakes, Deliciously Evil Designs for Every Occasion”. Pub.Harper Collins/Fil Rouge Press

 

 Thank you for letting me share my off beat sensibilities to celebrate the weird, the wacky and the wonderful.

 

Oh, and out of tradition, I'll always have a dead rat on my page.

 

-Debbie                  (click image for Amazon link)