Perhaps it’s because he is standing behind what looks like a jewelry case filled with sugar flowers ranging from bold hibiscus to delicate rosebuds. Or maybe it’s the note of Willy Wonka glee in his voice that gives John Ryal authority when he says the he runs with his wife, Judy, is “the happiest place in the world.”
Generations of bakers have taken the world to happy places at weddings, graduations and birthdays. Today, the joyful pursuit of cake decorating has a whole new curlicue thanks to , and other rock-star pastry chefs. Social media create platforms for showing off and sharing by experienced home bakers inspired by shows like and Even novices are dipping a finger in the fondant.
Englewood’s Cake Crafts — with classes and a vast stock of baking and decorating supplies — is just one of the businesses in the Denver area offering a range of support for the sweet habit. Entrepreneurs are making a party out of learning or offering online courses in the craft, which also features prominently in culinary-school catalogs.
Desiree Kelly grew up baking for family holiday dinners alongside her grandmother. She later earned a molecular biology degree and was working in a cancer research lab and pursuing an MBA in Denver when the call of family and creativity came in 2001.
More specifically, it was her younger sister on the line, announcing her engagement. Kelly volunteered to make the wedding cake.
“I hung up the phone and went, ‘Uh-oh,’ ” Kelly recalled. She launched herself into the study of decorating, and ended up teaching classes at several local craft stores. Listening to her students sparked the idea of a specialty cake bakery that would also offer a drop-in DIY space.
The front counter at Kelly’s in Centennial is dominated by a rearing bronco she fashioned from rice cereal and icing. Back in the narrow kitchen, you might find one of her eight employees laboring over a detailed, truck-shaped groomsmen’s cake. Kelly has found that TV shows heighten the expectations of customers for “event cakes” that are the heart of the business she has run and co-owned with her husband, Brad, since 2006.
She has also discovered that few people have time to decorate cakes in the DIY studio in the shop. So she takes the decorating tools, supplies and coaches to the customers — in homes, rec centers, and even a church. There staff will oversee a decorating party and stick around to clean up.
In contrast to Kelly’s approach, a new enterprise in Denver keeps the parties on premises.
Alyssa Jahns hosts her parties in the studio shop she calls Make at 6460 E. Yale Ave. A typical event follows a crafting party model. Instead of taking home a piece of pottery or a painting, the customers leave with cakes or cupcakes Jahns baked and they decorate.
Jahns, who started dabbling in decorating when she and her daughter made Father’s Day cakes for her husband, has been a therapist at a children’s home. That explains the friendly calm she maintains when her younger artists get giddy after tasting too much icing. She has also worked in real estate, accounting for her organizational skills: In her spare, brightly lit space, every jar of candy, rolling pin or palette knife is in its place and each of her hundreds of shape cutters are numbered.
Peaceful, bright
The effect is colorful yet orderly, an atmosphere that Marisa Allen, a researcher for a managed health care company, said made her feel confident and instantly appealed to Miles Schwartz, her 8-year-old son. They arrived at Make with a Pinterest photo of a cake on Allen’s mobile phone. Miles and Allen, who hadn’t made a cake since high school and considers herself far from artistic, left after two hours with a birthday cake whose image they were proud to relay via cellphone to friends and relatives.
“We laughed a lot,” Allen said. “There was no interruptions from cellphones. There was no TV. And we created something together.”
Jahns also puts together take-home kits, some with holiday themes, with cakes, instructions, and equipment, including containers of ready-made fondant, a pliable icing that even amateurs can roll and shape like clay, then drape over a confection to give a finish smooth enough to impress Martha Stewart.
If you need help channeling your inner Martha when you’re back in your own kitchen, you might watch a class at your leisure on your iPad from Craftsy, an online educational platform based in downtown Denver.
Cake decorating is the third most popular subject by revenue among students of , after quilting and sewing, said CEO John Levisay, who founded the company in 2010. A Craftsy Facebook page devoted to cake decorating has more than 829,000 members around the world.
“It’s a very hot category right now,” said Levisay, who hired Azara Golston, a cake designer and University of Chicago trained food anthropologist, to lead global hunts for cake decorating instructors for Craftsy, bringing in big names for shoots in Denver.
Levisay takes Craftsy cake- decorating classes himself, for weekend sessions in the kitchen with his 7-year-old daughter.
“It’s our No. 1 activity together,” Levisay said. “It reminds me of putting models together as a kid with my dad.”
Rising potential
Phyllis Cano scours the Internet to download examples for students in her cake-decorating classroom at central Denver’s Emily Griffith Technical College.
“The possibilities and the opportunities have grown,” Cano said, since she completed her training at Emily Griffith in 1971 and in the years she ran her own cake decorating businesses before returning to her alma mater as an instructor in 2000.
Cano attributes much of the buzz to TV cooking programs. She said her classroom capacity doubled to more than a dozen when the college opened a new campus this year, and she’s had no trouble filling seats.
At the Denver campus of , which offers a popular culinary arts program, Emmerich Zach trains students to create an intricately decorated cake, from batter to buttercream rosebuds, in a matter of hours.
Zach started as an apprentice in Austria and ran pastry shops in Philadelphia for 25 years. He came to Colorado to retire nine years ago, but grew bored and soon took up teaching. He’s seen marzipan go and cupcakes come. The enthusiasm of amateurs is a trend he doesn’t fear.
“If you want something really special, you go to a professional,” said Zach, crisp in his chef’s whites.
Cake Crafts is a place for everyone, from Johnson & Wales graduates looking for state-of-the art air guns — for painting with edible colors on the fondant Zach taught them to make themselves — to a hobbyist inspired by a Makery party who might want to crown a creation with one of those perfect sugar flowers.
Judy Ryal once sold special- occasion cakes from her Castle Rock home. She appeared on the Food Network in 2009 as an assistant to Zane Beg, who along with his partner Norman Davis runs a Washington, D.C.-area shop known for opulent pastries. The Ryal-Beg team came in second in a birthday cake contest.
Running Cake Crafts, which was already about 20 years old when she and her husband bought it in 2007, leaves her little time for her own decorating these days.
Customers come in wanting “to copy everything they see on the computer or TV,” she said. The Ryals offer novices advice — and share confidence-boosting optimism.
“They’re going to put 120 percent love into it,” John Ryal said. “They’re going to come up with something adorable.”
Classes
The Makery Cake Co.: themakery.com. A Makery decorating party is $25 per person for a minimum of 10. Delivery is free within 30 miles of the shop. A Makery teacher will give a demonstration and offer tips to partiers, each of whom gets a 6-inch round cake to take home. The package includes a large cake for everyone to enjoy at the party, and post-party-clean-up.
Make:
Cake parties at $39 per person include two hours in the studio, a regular cake for the host and guests, and one cupcake for decorating per guest.
Craftsy: Hundreds of video classes for computer or mobile device in cake decorating, photography, knitting and other pursuits. For example, for $39.99, you can buy a cake design package that includes seven video lessons and a chance to ask an instructor questions in a “virtual classroom.”
Cake Crafts: cakecrafts.net. Judy Ryal, who teaches some of the classes herself, offers Wilton courses for $85, including a $35 kit, for four sessions of two hours each. She also brings in Food Network stars to lead classes, though those classes will be more expensive.
Emily Griffith Opportunity School:
The college’s cake decorating program is divided into a five-credit, 14-week basic course, in which students learn a variety of icing techniques and get business tips, and a two-credit, five-week advanced course that culminates with the creation of a three-tiered cake. The total program costs $812. Scholarships available.
Johnson & Wales: Johnson & Wales University has a campus in Denver, among other cities. Its College of Culinary Arts offers an associate’s degree in baking and pastry arts and its College of Management offers a bachelor’s in baking and pastry arts and food service management. The basic undergraduate annual tuition on the Denver campus is $28,239. Financial aid and scholarships available.
Find more classes in Food Calendar, page 2C
