TAKING THE CAKE Alex Narramore, Creative Director of The Mischief Maker, shares what inspires her edible artworks. Written by Alex Narramore / Photography by Natasha Raichel For me, flowers are forever. They are the source of everything timeless that exists. I am endlessly fascinated that I can buy the same roses that I find in ancient still life portraits, found in museums the world over, to grow in my garden at home. Flowers are as timeless as it gets. Observing flowers from the garden and illustrations and then sculpting and painting them in an edible medium, in sugar, is my passion. I want someone that finds a picture of one of my cakes 100 years from now to relate, find themselves transported, and dream, much like I find myself dreaming when I look at those beautiful paintings. The best works of art and the best cakes are visually soothing, composed, and perfectly imperfect, without a hair out of place. It’s always been about making beautiful things more so than monetizing. It’s always been about making a connection to a client and bringing something to life for them, even if that means impracticality over practicality, I’ll go with whatever makes a beautiful result. Without beautiful things, I believe that there is no reason to live. Some people think beautiful things are superficial and unneeded, that they are an unnecessary extravagance. I’ve often said
that we could all live in brown plain rooms while wearing potato sack dresses, eat bland food, and carry around twigs instead of flowers if all that mattered was practicality and necessity. Wouldn’t the world be a dull, lifeless place? Beautiful things matter. They enhance our quality of life and our experiences. My sugar flower cakes are much like real flowers. They are temporal. They are much better when made closer to the time that they will be used. They fade, much like real flowers. They are fragile, and that’s what makes them beautiful. There is no concern for seasonality or the use of a poisonous bloom. The sugar flower cakes are a fantasy where any flower in any color can come together to grow in an edible garden, crawling up and over otherwise structured tiers of the cake. I think it’s hard in this day and age for a lot of people to stop and appreciate something so detailed and crafted by hand. They have to imagine every stamen, every petal, every bud, every calyx, and every color is made individually and combined to create a flower. Often hundreds of steps. Then each flower, each stem of leaves, is coupled to make an entire sugar flower arrangement. One cake. That being said, when someone buys a cake, it often steals the show at an event, as it is an opportunity, a centerpiece that seems to draw people toward it.
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