These Works of Art Take The Cake « Arts &Amp; Entertainment

I took one look at Nathalie Druyts’ website Take The Cake and my mouth dropped open in amazement! Her cakes are true works of art and I was thrilled when she responded to my interview request. Nathalie, you did a fantastic job with your English and I love your passion!

CG: Nathalie, please tell us a little about yourself and how you got started making cakes.

ND: I’m 39 years old and am originally from Antwerp Belgium. I own a ‘dare to be different’ cake boutique in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I started making cakes with my great grandmother as soon as I was old enough to sit at the kitchen table. Since then I have continued baking (mouthwatering) cakes with a lot of love on the side of everything else I was doing; studying, working, my daughter, and my family.

Three years ago I got accepted at the University of Amsterdam Conservation Masters programme after having finished my Art History studies. I Iove using and stretching the limits of the brain, but soon I discovered it was magical for me to be able to work with my hands (in the conservation programme there’s a lot of working with your hands as opposed to studying Art History). It just made me so extremely happy to see I could create beautiful things with my hands just like all the artists I had spent studying for years. I realised I did not want to conserve paintings, I wanted to create beautiful things because it made me happy, in balance, like I was doing what I was meant to do.

I was still baking cakes with a lot of fun and decided I wanted to give up my job, stop studying and take a cake decorating class. A few months later I was on a plane from Amsterdam to Chicago to take the Masters course cake decorating at the Wilton school of cake decorating and confectionary arts in Chicago. During my 2 week stay I learned so much and I found I loved the art of designing cakes. When I arrived back in Amsterdam I started a home based cake business with success and 2 months later I got my first feature in a Dutch newspaper. In the summertime I studied with Colette Peters and took a baking bootcamp in New York. Now, almost a year later, I have had to rent a workshop as Take The Cake has gotten too big to organize from my home. The workshop opens on February 14th (Valentine’s day).

CG: Can you tell us what inspires you?

ND: Take the Cake specializes in signature designer cakes for any occasion. My aim is to sit down with every client, listen to his and/or her story and consequently design and create a mouthwatering original and one of a kind cake from an artistic point of view instead of doing what every ordinary baker does (a standard book with some cakes you can choose from in it). My designs are mainly inspired by artworks and style periods in the history of art.

I love that I have taken the art of cake designing to the next level over here in the Netherlands. I will put love poems and cameos and portraits of Marie-Antoinette on a cake or look at renaissance decorating patterns and recreate them on a cake. I am extremely fond of the abstract theories on colour so I will spend a lot of time putting the right colours together to get a grand design.

I deliver my wedding cakes myself and cut them for bride and groom on the spot.

CG: Please tell us about your favorite experience with your cake business.

ND: My favorite experience has been the large amount of Christmas cards I got from my clients of 2009 with pictures of them at their wedding cake and telling me how much they loved it! Making other people’s most beautiful day even more perfect with my designs and thus making them happy is why I love doing this work.

The hardest assignment I have probably had last year is a wedding cake for 250 guests that had to get on a small ship, on a hot summer day, no AC and no elevator to get the cake downstairs and upstairs again at the moment it had to be cut. But was it really a hurdle? I don’t think so cause I love my job, I try to see these things as a challenge.