Avant Garde Cake Studio: Let Them Eat Cake! French Cake Maker, Sarah, Wants You and Your Guests To Enjoy Every Bite and Leave Your Wedding Full of Good Memories and Good Food
Cake is an art you can eat according to French baker, Sarah, of Avant Garde Cake Studio. “I was really in love with making something taste amazing and also look stunning,” she says. With an impressive academic background in philosophy and philosophy of art before her year spent in an accelerated patisseries course in Paris, Sarah has finally found a perfect marriage between her love of art and her love of baking. That perfect marriage is your wedding cake!
She was thrown into the deep end when the head decorator of the shop she was interning at began her maternity leave; she went from never decorating a cake before to decorating four to five a week! Beginning Avant Garde Cake Studio years later here in the UK (she’s Redding based but will, and I quote, “…go everywhere for cake!”) Sarah is no longer a stranger to cake decorating, though the four to five cakes a week situation hasn’t necessarily changed much. She’s also known as Tiny Sarah’s Cakes, though you wouldn’t imagine that the same baker behind the kawaii aesthetic is also the same one who turns simple ingredients into works of art. “I wanted something that was artistic because everything I make is heavily influenced by art—I love creativity—but also I wanted something with a French aspect. And so Avant Garde Cake Studio was a great name because I just love the aesthetic of the Avant Garde movement and it’s what I do.”
Sarah named her business to “…evoke this rebellious, new, exciting, non-traditional and French way of doing things.”
“I work differently from a lot of cake makers—I don’t offer sketches,” she shares, anticipating that the couples who book her will rely on a shared aesthetic and mutual trust that will let the perfect work of art take form organically. This practice is done in part to offer her couples a surprise on their wedding day. “Generally things have been planned to death,” she laments. She enjoys the way the cake will take shape in her mind when she focuses on it long-term as she and the couple stay in contact via her cake subscription services, offering them cake each month during the lead-up to their wedding day. The couples influence the cakes, she assures me, but Sarah is willing to let the cake take control. “I like the cake to develop as I’m making it. Cake doesn’t necessarily adhere to a 2-D sketch—especially if you work with textures. It won’t crack where you say it does, it’ll crack where it wants,” she advises. “When we make sugar flowers or wafer paper flowers I go with what the cakes need—rather than replicating what a real flower looks like. I don’t try to control it too much. Too much control lends itself to a non-organic thing,” Sarah says, preferring a “wild and fluid” aesthetic like that of artistic influences Van Gogh and Renoir.
“A lot of my work—if it’s not about cake—it’s about helping my couples and making their lives easier. I communicate directly with venues and florists—trying to make people’s lives as easy as possible,” she shares. She made the decision to say yes to every one of her couples that moved their weddings. It was a very intense summer, she tells me, but worth it to provide the wedding cake for each of her couples, even those who re-booked back-to-back.
“You should be fed by a cake” Sarah tells me and she wasn’t about to leave any of her couples, or their guests, unsatisfied.
She’s very community-oriented, enjoying the bits of her work that happen outside the kitchen as well as within. Speaking with other wedding suppliers is icing on the cake so-to-speak, an opportunity she hopes people will begin to pursue. “Instead of working with suppliers individually, making everyone work together as a team for the wedding would also be really lovely,” she says, considering some trends that aren’t really trending, but that she wishes would take off! “A lot of the time when you dry-hire they would have really cool set ups for cakes, but people don’t generally get an idea to cross-pollinate the weddings—[to] get everyone involved with everyone. Try thinking outside the box,” she encourages her couples, “—just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it can’t be done!”
She has a last bit of advice: “TRUST YOUR SUPPLIERS! They know what they’re doing.”
Her desire for weddings to become more about community doesn’t begin or end with wedding suppliers. She’d also like to see more couples consider their guests and the planet, particularly when it comes to food and cake. “You’re inviting people that you love and personally, when I throw a party, I love that people are having a good time; that makes me have a good time.” She wants more people to be considerate about dietary requirements in the future; as a vegan cake maker who can cater to a range of dietary requirements, she knows an allergen-friendly cake can taste just as sweet as a cake that may go uneaten because guests haven’t been catered to or considered. “You need to think about others in order to love them,” she says, remembering times when she’s gone to a wedding and leaving with the memory of her hunger, rather than full of joyful experiences. “Food is a great way to achieve a full experience—if you’re hungry, it’s going to be shit. Tons of my couples aren’t vegan, but they go for me because it includes everyone.” But it’s not just the guests who deserve to have their cake and eat it too, it’s the couples who should be able to enjoy every crumb of their day. “I’ve had so many messages after the wedding, ‘I didn’t think I’d be able to have my own wedding cake,’ which honestly breaks my heart. You should be able to eat anything you serve at your wedding—you should be able to access food wherever you are.”
As for taking care of the planet, Sarah finds that doing so means taking care of the couple and the guests. Avant Garde Cake Studio will arrive at your wedding fully armed with biodegradable food parcels, ready to package up any leftovers from your meal, or any last slices of cake for you and your guests to take home with you. She learned from her own wedding how much food wastage is a part of weddings and knew she wanted to do something about it when launching her own weddings and events cake studio. Neither Sarah Tiny Cakes, nor Avant Garde Cake Studio uses any single-use plastic, opting instead for biodegradable and compostable packaging. When the couple, their guests and the earth is happy, then Sarah is happy.
