SA woman’s huge cake success!
One thing’s for sure: Dot gets a rise out of her bakes!
THE life-size sculptures are pretty impressive but there’s a sweet surprise that makes them even more spectacular. Each is crafted with great precision – and the “raw” material is cake. Dot Klerck is one of only a handful of artists in the world able to sculpt her works out of a tasty piece of confectionery. One of her edible works takes days to complete and can weigh more than a ton.
Her creations include a 3m-tall Madiba cake, which was recently exhibited in Sandton City, Johannesburg. She made it to help raise funds for Cupcakes of Hope, a nonprofit organisation that aims to help children with cancer.
“I was 19 years old when I baked my first cake – I was so proud,” the 41-yearold says of the teddy bear cake that started it all.
She was an au pair in Germany at the time and the family she worked for taught her to cook and bake, as she could barely fry an egg when she arrived there.
Later, when she and her husband, Tobie (46), lived for six months in France where he worked in agriculture, Dot learnt to bake different types of bread.
“It was only years later, after we’d returned home and I started baking birthday cakes for my four kids, that I realised I like making my cakes more artful,” the charismatic baker tells us from her home in Wellington in the Western Cape.
She’s come a long way since that first cake – these days she often returns to Europe to give classes about designing, baking and decorating large cakes.
DOT started her business, Eat, Cake, Party, 10 years ago after teaching herself how to work with fondant. She made her first giant cake – a chocolate Pelican 85cm high and 1,5m wide – on Father’s Day in 2015 for Tobie.
The following year she created a 1,6mtall rhino cake that stretched 3m from snout to tail, using 35kg of chocolate and 130kg of fondant to complete the piece for the charity Rhinos in Africa.
In 2017 a life-size elephant cow and calf weighing 1,2 tons followed, for which she was awarded the prize for best showpiece at the Cake Masters Awards in Birmingham, England.
Dot’s sugary masterpieces usually require more than 1 000 eggs, more than 100kg of flour and more than 100kg of chocolate or fondant.
She designs and calculates the measurements on paper then adjusts her recipe accordingly and has the cake baked piece by piece at an industrial bakery in Wellington.
Individual cakes are made on 60cm baking sheets – sometimes up to 150 at a time.
Meanwhile, Dot designs and builds a structure from wood fibre, wire or metal to support the cake.
She puts the fondant over the structure then sculpts the cake and uses chocolate to stick it to the structure.
Next she decorates the cake statue with chocolate, food colouring, homemade fudge, nougat or candyfloss.
“I find each cake I bake to be special. Sometimes when I stand back and look at the final product it feels almost unreal. I’m grateful people appreciate the art of it,” she says.
But what about when the time comes for people to tuck in?
“I’m a little sad about all my hard work disappearing,” Dot says. “But I make sure they taste good and I want people to enjoy them.”