Experience Flourish Cake Design a bit more deeply.
My name is Bria, I am the Executive Chef and Creative Director at Flourish Cake Design. Thanks for taking the time to check out the newest addition to the website. Instagram and other social media are great for showing the final product or a time-lapse of the process, but in starting this blog, I hope to share more of the infinite number of moving parts in the wedding cake design and creation process. I hope you can get to know me a bit better as well as I go back to where it all started - blogging.
Back in 2009, I was laid off from my product design job, and the random blog I had started slowly morphed into a food blog as I suddenly found a lot of extra time on my hands. I have always enjoyed cooking; it runs in the family, but as I became more interested in the aesthetics of the photos I was taking and posting, my inclinations started veering towards desserts and baking. You can only make such a pretty picture out of brown soup, but layered cakes, fruit-adorned tarts, colorful cookies, and cake pops - instant visual appeal.
One thing led to another, and I was baking all the time, using my experience as a designer to style the photos and the goods themselves. A few friends and acquaintances asked me to bake for their special events, I was included in a cookbook and writing for an online food magazine, and things really took off from there. As much as you can learn just by doing and through online resources, I decided I wanted to learn the basics, the core principles of baking and pastry, so I signed up for a certificate course at Kendall College here in Chicago.
I so value this experience; it let me dip my toe into the world of commercial baking, professional pastry chef-ing, and taught me so much about the nitty-gritty of this world. It’s funny, I look back and don't think that we really even grazed the surface of what I am doing now (wedding cakes, cake design, and sugar flowers), but all the other knowledge was priceless. It also introduced me to my first official job as a pastry cook at Dreamcakes in Northbrook, IL. Working in a commercial kitchen for the first time was a wake-up call, followed by a few restaurant jobs, everything always leading me back to wanting to make cakes.
In 2014, I decided to leave the restaurant world and started working at Sugar Fixe in Oak Park, IL, as a full-time cake decorator. I fell in love with the process, and soon after, Flourish Cake Design was born. Though I am not the owner (fiscally), it is my baby that I have helped grow and nourish over the last six years.
So, follow along as we dig a bit deeper into the process of bespoke wedding cake design. Subscribe to our mailing list for news and future posts!
Baby Bria’s very first wedding cake:
Of course, I would make a square covered with homemade marshmallow fondant for my very first cake. Knowing what I know now, that would be the LAST shape and finish I would choose for someone just starting out. But you live, you bake, you learn, right?
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