FOOD
Monica Nettles, who has been with the bakery for
two years, works with fondant, an edible icing used
to sculpt cakes and pastries.
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Dunn and her son, A.J., inspect a four-tier wedding cake before putting on the finishing touches.
Dunn designed her cake to look and even sound like a piano.
“When you cut the cake open it had piano keys and it played
music,” she said. “We attached a music box, which played
Beethoven’s Fur Elise. It was a great cake and a lot of fun.”
She said the Food Network crew did 16 hours of filming
for what will be a segment of about seven minutes when it
is broadcast. She plans to host a viewing party at the bakery
when she finds out when the show will air.
Dunn did not learn how to bake by helping her mother in
the kitchen.
“My mother was not a cook or a baker,” she said. “It’s something
I did with my children, to have quality time with them
when we were homeschooling. When they needed a break, we
went into the kitchen and made cookies or cakes or brownies.”
She has never forgotten her first cake.
“It was for my son’s third birthday,” she said. “I made a
Poke’ ball cake out of a regular cake. When it was finished,
it was round. I didn’t know how to make a ball cake at that
time. It was ugly and horrible.”
Despite its shape, her son loved his mom’s first cake.
“He went crazy over it,” she said, “and I got better over
time.”
Now, Dunn’s cakes start at $100.
“All day long, I book $500 cakes,” she said. “I’d say $1,200
is a high average.”
The cake for a bar mitzvah cost $3,000, but a wedding cake
she’s going to do might be the fanciest yet. It will have five
tiers, with a gazebo and fountain, and will cost $5,000.
“People want their cake to be memorable,” she said. “They
want people to talk about it and say, oh my gosh, I love that
cake! I don’t think I’ve ever done a plain white cake, but if I
did, it had some amazing filling, like passion fruit.”
Dunn teaches cake decorating to students from St. Andrew’s
Episcopal
Academy
and also offers
cupcake camps
in the summer.
For adults interested
in honing
their cupcake
decorating
skills while
socializing with
friends, Dunn
offers “Girls
Night Out,” a
private party at
the bakery for
groups of six or
more.
The bakery is
equipped with a
large convection
oven that allows
air to circulate
so that 288 standard
cupcakes
can be baked at
one time. An entire wall is filled with cutters and molds and
252 baking pans are stacked on shelves.
“We have some very good ingredients and we take a lot
of time,” she said. “If something is undercooked, I’ll throw
it out. We do everything fresh and I think that’s really the
secret. If you have a wedding on Friday, we won’t bake your
cake until Thursday.”