Let us eat cake!

photos by Kevin C. Groen

Cake Lady & Petite Pastries
3561 S. Kinnickinnic Ave.
St. Francis
414-294-4220
cakeladydesigns.com

Michelangelo fashioned the treasured Statue of David and the Pieta. Rodin gained prominence for his ponderous works, The Thinker and The Kiss. An anonymous artist chiseled out a place in art infamy with the Venus de Milo.

None of these renowned sculptors, however, have anything on Sara Unkefer, owner of The Cake Lady and Petite Pastries. Her towering confections are not only artistically impressive, they’re edible!
Wedding cakes festooned with elaborate piping, swags, grape clusters and dotted with frosting pearls are her forte. But one of Unkefer’s greatest gifts is her ability to realize her clients’ desires in cake. She has created a wild, teetering tower of silver and gold fondant-wrapped gifts; colorful fish cakes as big as a reeler’s imagined catch; football helmets and cartoon characters. From the kooky and kitschy to the elegant and fabulous, The Cake Lady does it all.

The 32-year-old, her husband Briton (a corporate chef) and their toddler son Levi are Bay View residents and the pastry shop is just a couple of blocks away in St. Francis. With their combined experience and reputations, this couple could live and work anywhere, but chose Milwaukee for proximity to both their families.

Sara Unkefer grew up in Appleton, one of six kids. Her mother had an artistic streak, expressed in home crafts like Mickey Mouse and Cookie Monster cakes for birthdays and painting ceramics. Unkefer helped paint the intricate Hummel characters and holiday decorations because she had a steady hand, a must in her profession.

“I was an adventurous kid,” Unkefer says. “I was very decisive. I knew what I wanted and was willing to put up an argument to get it.” Her parents were a catalyst for her experimental zeal. She instilled the philosophy that nothing’s impossible. “Growing up in a family of six gave us a lot of strength. They taught us to embrace life and not to be sacred to do what we believe in.”

Though her parents never traveled beyond Canada, their children all had the wanderlust. Unkefer worked long hours in Door County restaurants summers and falls to finance her exploits. There she met a young woman who brandished photos of herself with Taliban gunmen in Afghanistan. While most people would be terrified by this disclosure, for Unkefer it deepened the intrigue of travel. After a year at UWM studying anthropology, Unkefer set out to experience ethnic traditions in situ. Backpacking by herself, she toured Mexico, Central America, the Carribean, Holland, Spain and Belgium.

Fellow travelers introduced Unkefer to diverse culinary traditions. One trekker carried three duffle bags of spices he had collected on his travels. His meals, prepared in a borrowed kitchen or in banana leaves over an open fire, were so amazing they prompted Unkefer to abandon her vegetarian lifestyle. In Guatemala she encountered a man who’d built a wood-fired oven for baking breads and pizza. It was an encounter that sparked an interest in baking that she would leaven through apprenticeships with America’s most respected bakers. First it was wood-fired stove guru Alan Scott in Petaluma, California. Then with Chad Robertson and Elizabeth Pruitt, who are now renowned for their San Francisco bakery Tartine.

“I had no interest in pastry until I started working for [Pruitt] because she does a phenomenal job. Being from America it’s hard to know what real pastries taste like. I learned from her how good products taste – real butter, light flaky pastry crust, fresh berries, good chocolate and real juice. She thinks outside the box.”

Accompanying her future husband (who was working on a second degree in regional European cuisine) to Switzerland, Sara completed an intensive program in pastries and chocolate. In 2003, they got married and settled in Milwaukee. She spent her pregnancy making up dummy cakes, meeting and greeting people in the wedding industry and testing the market for her dream business. Unkerfer worked for Debbie Pagel at Eat Cake in Milwaukee and studied with the reigning queen of cake decorating, Colette Peters, at the Wilton School in Darien, Illinois.

Three years ago Sara Unkefer opened The Cake Lady and with no marketing beyond word of mouth and business cards, she now has as much business as she can handle. “People come to me looking for something they can’t get anywhere else; for a cake that’s going to stand out.” It’s little wonder, her creations are incomparable, prices competitive and the flavor, well, you’ll have to experience that yourself. VS