‘Sugar School’
SUGAR ARTIST CREATES ‘DREAMY’ CAKES AND NOW LOOKS TO TEACH OTHERS
Cake artist Elisabeth Palatiello is a sculptor, only her medium includes fondant, sugar gum paste, rich buttercream and flavorful, moist cake.
Owner of But a Dream Custom Cakes, Palatiello turns icing into the stuff dreams are made of — at least her customers’ dreams.
From delicate, detailed sugar flowers that look surprisingly real down to the stamens, to the universal “cardboard” Amazon box with its familiar markings — customers often are afraid to cut into her masterpieces, she noted.
“People are literally — ‘I can’t cut it, I can’t cut it.’ That’s your dessert, you need to cut it and it tastes delicious,” she said.
And then there fantasy cakes, like her ironic Tiger King cake she whipped up “in the heart of COVID” in early 2020 because she was bored being stuck in the house and all her cake orders were canceled. She and her two sons had binge-watched the megahit Netflix series.
“Of course I had to make the Tiger King,” Palatiello said with a wide grin.
She ended up with a fullyrendered bust of the Tiger King himself, entirely made of sugar and cake. Her teen boys eagerly video recorded the ceremonial cutting of the confection while a soundtrack played in the background.
This year, her themes are more cheery, seasonal and bridal.A recent creation was a cake that looks like a blue, handknitted winter hat with two “ceramic” mugs of cocoa on a tray, all lit up with fairy lights. The tableaux looked so realistic that some partygoers were a bit puzzled.
Her friend and client Antonia Kellner, the cake’s recipient, noted a couple of guests couldn’t seem to resist poking the holiday dessert.
“A couple of people went to grab the [cups’] handles and I had to put a sign on it,” Kellner said. “It was hilarious. It was the centerpiece that day.”
With visions of cakes in her head, Palatiello often is working out engineering problems when designing something tricky.
That’s partly why her business is named But a Dream Custom Cakes.
It’s just part of the lyric in the song “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” She explained, “Life is but a dream.”
And mostly, “It also rhymes with buttercream. So that’s where I came up with that,” said Palatiello.
“I make all kinds of cakes,” she said, “It’s the ones that look like something else entirely that really grab everyone’s attention — whether it’s the snow hat or an Hermes bag, a stack of pancakes — these things always blow people’s minds.”
“They’re super-fun to make and get people’s attention,” she said.
Palatiello even has a special category called “gravity defying cakes.” One such cake is of a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, with a plastic fork suspended mid-air with fondant “pasta” trailing from it.
While unusual cakes can be a fun problem-solving exercise for her, Palatiello said she loves the romance of making a wedding cake.
“But I think my heart is really in the wedding cakes,” she said.
“I love to make somebody’s big, beautiful, towering wedding cake. It’s the cake of a lifetime,” she added.
Palatiello’s cake business isn’t all about making show-stopping cakes.
In her gleaming commercial kitchen built on the side of her Guilford home, Palatiello is offering cake design classes, what she calls “Sugar School.” These are aimed at aspiring cake artists, folks in the business looking to bring their skills “up to the next level,” and basic courses for the home baker.
Palatiello said she loves to connect with other “cake people” and enjoys mentoring other cake-makers.
At Sugar School, she plans to offer instruction in how to work with sugar flowers, an advanced level course. She’s also had home bakers reach out to her for “buttercream basics.”
“There is a pretty big learning curve” for working with fondant, she admitted, so it would not be a beginner course.
Baking was something in Palatiello’s DNA. As one of four girls in her family, she practically grew up with a mixing bowl in her hands.
She went to school for fashion design and later worked for a sportswear company in New York. She uses her fashion sense in cake design — relying on her knowledge of proportion, color and texture, she said.
And then there are the obvious riffs — high-end designer shoe cakes and Tiffany & Co. blue boxes.
After 9/11, Palatiello moved to Connecticut and started dabbling in cake baking for her two growing boys, Michael and Vincent, who now are 17 and 15, respectively.
“I started making their birthday cakes. My oldest, when he was little, had many food allergies.” Michael was allergic to eggs and nuts.
“I started making his cakes egg-free, allergy-free so he could have them,” she said.
“It became my creative outlet,” she said. “I started offering them to my friends, and made their child’s birthday cake so that my son could go to the party and have some — instead of bringing double Rice Krispies treats,” she said with a laugh.
“I loved the challenge of making fun cakes for kids. It just kind of grew where people I didn’t even know were asking me to make their child’s birthday cake.
“I decided I could turn it into a business — seven years ago I made the leap,” she recalled.
Next group classes for the Sugar School are Feb. 19-20 and March 12-13. For more information about Sugar School and custom cakes visit ButADreamCakes.com or call 203-675-5998.