Recently I heard about the fantastic duo that are The Tattooed Bakers. Given my love of tattoos and baking (eating baked goods) I decided to check out the much talked about cake, which is described as bespoke edible art. I instantly fell in love with their unicorn cake, and after spending a while both drooling and feeling intrigued by their website gallery I thought I'd see if they would be up for an interview. The Tattooed Bakers kindly agreed to tell us a bit more about their work!
How did you come up with the idea of Tattooed Bakers?
We wanted to create a brand that deviated as much as
possible from traditional pretty cakes, and to push the boundary of what can be
done in cake - essentially we want to be the UK's answer to Cake Boss!!
When
did you start baking? What was your first baking job?
We started baking cakes in 2011 in a bit of an
unconventional way! We started a company called "Cake Doggy Dog' (www.cakedoggydog.com) that
make completely bespoke cakes to look like our customers dogs! We
found that it was too niche, so we started Tattooed Bakers so that we could
branch out into different subject matter.
Could you tell us a little more about Cake Doggy Dog?
The idea behind Cake Doggy Dog is that we create a completely bespoke cake version of your dog! We ask our customers to send as many photos as possible, and choose the position they'd like their cake-dog to be in and any distinguishing features of their pet so that we can make them as life-like and personal as possible. It's a bit of an unusual concept!
How
would you describe your cake style?
Different, exploratory and we approach cakes from
an artistic point of view rather than a "cake-maker's"
- neither of us are "trained" cake-makers so we've learnt
to use cake and sugarpaste in a way that works for us and our creations.
'Hell Horse' created for Miss
Cakehead's Halloween Pop Up shop "Eat Your Heart Out" 2013. It had
Kraken Rum flowing out of its nose!
What
inspires you?
We approach our cakes with an attitude that anything and
everything can be made into a cake - and try and do things that haven't been
done before (as much as possible!) It sounds really naff, but when we create
our sculpted cakes we sort of forget that its cake and concentrate on making
something that will make people say "Wow" first and then
"That's a cake?" second. Baking and Cake Artistry has become
such a massive thing over the last few years, it's really about creating
something innovative now - I think people want to see something that they can't
make at home.
Mick
Jagger's 70th Birthday Party
What
has been your most challenging project so far?
We've recently had a few commissions for
portrait cakes - these are definitely the most challenging! Ensuring that the
cake looks like person it's supposed to be, but also making sure that it has
some character to it is pretty challenging! We've recently made one that we
can't say too much about, for a documentary - that was pretty nerve wracking.
Favorite
cake filling or flavor?
Red Velvet!! I'm completely obsessed with it at the
moment.
You
recently won the ‘2013 Novelty Cake award’ Congratulations! – Could you tell us about which cake
this was for and how it felt to win?
We won this award for the life-size rainbow cake filled
Unicorn we created for "Baketopia" - an edible pop-up for National
Baking Week. It was a real honor to win this award actually - as
relatively new cake makers it was lovely to be acknowledge by the "cake
world" in this way.
For more updates on The Tattooed Bakers check out their website below!
