Some dreams are good enough to eat.

 Kim and I both love to be in the kitchen and cooked a lot while living together in New York. While making daydream lists of where the Once Upon A City collection could go, we started talking about creating colorful cakes decorated with the artwork and the stories. This lead to some research on what other people were doing when cake was used as the palette and the paints were food coloring. Through this, I discovered the cookbook The Whimsical Bakehouse: Fun-to-Make Cakes That Taste as Good as They Look on Amazon.com a couple years ago and was totally blown away. What these women were doing with cake seemed like a Dr. Seuss daydream.

Curious about their background, inspiration and experiences, I sent them a baker's dozen questions.

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WHAT HAVE BEEN THE CHALLENGES AND THE ASSETS OF BEING A MOTHER/DAUGHTER TEAM?
Kaye: The best part of working with Liv is just watching her develop as a human being. I am in awe of her. The challenge: not taking it personally when she criticizes me.
Liv: Well, my mom is inspirational. She is the hardest worker I know. I aspire to be as strong as she is – and I don’t mean just lifting heavy tiered cakes (although she is known to flex her toned biceps on occasion), but emotionally. That said, she is still my mom and I can regress a bit with her: complain openly, talk back, etc…something that wouldn’t happen with another boss.

KAYE, WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO OPEN YOUR FIRST BAKERY IN 1988?
I love baking and had always baked for Liv, family, and friends. After waitressing, catering, and sewing to make a living I finally decided I wanted to own and operate my own business. My then partner, Jill, and I opened the Runcible Spoon in 1988.

LIV, HOW DID YOU DISCOVER THE AMAZING CONNECTION THAT COULD BE MADE BETWEEN YOUR TRAINING AND TALENT AS A PAINTER AND HOW IT COULD BE USED ON A CAKE CANVAS? AND AT WHAT POINT DID IT TRANSITION FROM BEING A HOBBY TO BEING A CAREER?
Before graduating college if someone asked me what I wanted to do with my life I would say, “Other than painting I’m not sure what I want to do, but I do know that I don’t want to work in the food business.” This was spoken from experience - I grew up helping my mom and knew how labor intensive the food industry was. I ate my words. I started working for my mom in 1994 (just “temporarily”) but when I moved from cashier to cake decorator something clicked. It was creative, rewarding, and I actually liked the hands-on labor involved in the day to day bakery world.

In college I had an amazing painting professor, Kay Walkingstick, whose approach to teaching was physical, gestural, and a lot about letting go and just seeing what happens. This forgiving and exploratory way of working was freeing and it definitely allowed me to see how much could be learned from experimentation and accidents. Without this lesson I would not have discovered all of the decorating techniques I use today. Many of my decorations are created on a whim.

WHAT HAS BEEN THE MOST DELIGHTFUL SURPRISE ABOUT OWNING YOUR OWN BAKERY?
Kaye: Being the boss. But the relationships that we have developed with our employees have been a real gift. Some are like family.

Liv: Actually my mom is the boss. Although it wasn’t much of a surprise, she has always been supportive of everything I do: from designing new cakes to taking a step back from full-time work to teach and raise my son.

WHAT CAKE PROJECT PROVED TO BE THE MOST CHALLENGING?
Kaye: My first wedding cake that I had to bake and decorate by myself.
Liv: Every year when the major holidays approach we experience the lull before the storm. We dread the hundreds and hundreds of stock cakes that we will have to produce, the fight for storage space, and the long hours. And thanks (not), to my fertile imagination too many of the cakes are overly decorative.
Basically instead of relaxing on the holidays you work like a machine.

WHAT HAS BEEN THE MOST BIZARRE REQUEST FOR A CAKE DESIGN? AND ARE THERE ACTUALLY REQUESTS THAT MAKE YOU SAY "I'M SORRY. WE WON'T DO THAT?"
Kaye: We say “no” to erotic cakes…
Liv: …I might scare the customers with my realism.
Once a customer asked for a pile of s**t on their cake. Talk about unappetizing. I’m not sure who or how or why we said yes to it, but we did, and it was gross. One of our decorators embedded kernels of buttercream corn to really put it over the top. But I wouldn’t do it again.

CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT A BAKING EXPERIENCE THAT WENT SO HYSTERICALLY WRONG THAT IT STILL CONJURES LAUGHTER TO THINK ABOUT TODAY?
Kaye: Before I knew any better I used to measure out my ingredients cup by cup- imagine counting out 90 cups of flour and losing count after 80. It still makes me laugh.
Liv: Most of the things that have gone wrong initially made me want to cry, but in retrospect it’s all ok. Like delivering my cousin’s wedding cake- half way through the trip the cake slid off its board and hit the back of the car seat. Luckily we were able to push it back into place and make the mashed side the back.

IS THERE A SECRET YOU'VE LEARNED THAT YOU BELIEVE EVERY NEW BAKER SHOULD KNOW?
Kaye: Be prepared to work long and hard.
Liv: People new to, or outside of the food business, sometimes think it would be so fun to decorate cakes, but really being a cake decorator is a lot like any other job – it has its ups and downs. I love the creative aspects of my job, but the day-to-day work is more like an assembly line. Sometimes you can find a comfortable rhythm – sometimes it is plain old stressful.

WHAT COOKING UTENSIL WOULD HAVE YOU CURSING THE BAKERY GODS IF YOU SUDDENLY REALIZED IT HAD GONE MISSING?
Kaye: The 80-quart mixer. We’d be out of business if we didn’t have one (or more).
Liv: My metal cake scraper. Basically it is a sawed off bench scraper that I use to make my final coat of buttercream super smooth.

HOW HAS THE BAKERY INDUSTRY CHANGED SINCE THINGS LIKE THE FOOD NETWORK HAVE DARED PEOPLE TO TAKE NEW RISKS IN THE KITCHEN?
Kaye: For the most part our customers aren’t very adventurous - our best seller is still our fudge layer. But our other best seller is our “mini-birthday –cake” (the tipsy colorful cake on the cover of our first book) so they will try new items if they catch their eye.
Since I am constantly trying new recipes our more daring customers always have something interesting to choose from.
Liv: Our customers, thanks to all of the wacky Food Network Challenges, think we can do anything with cake. I can do a lot with cake, but not anything. We are limited because we don’t use fondant (mom says it tastes bad) or complex inedible structural supports, nevertheless, my decorations have gotten wilder and more colorful over the years simply because people responded to them and would buy them.

AT THE RIVIERA BAKEHOUSE, WHAT ARE THE SEASONAL FAVORITES, BOTH FOR YOURSELF AND FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS?
In general customers can’t get enough of our cupcakes – some weeks we bake 16 dozen a day. And then when December rolls the oven is always full of cookies- we probably sell about 200 pounds of cookies a day. Each holiday and special event has a special menu and these include seasonal favorites like Easter bread, football cakes for Superbowl, 3-d ladybugs and beach pails for the 4th, pies for Thanksgiving, and Yule Logs for Christmas.
SPRING
Kaye: blueberry crumb cake
Liv: Mmm, sounds good to me too.
SUMMER
Kaye: summer bounty pie
Liv: real strawberry shortcake (biscuit) and strawberry rhubarb pie
FALL
Kaye: apple pie
Liv: pumpkin pie, or maybe pecan pie, or maybe sweet potato pecan pie
WINTER
Kaye: Stollen and Christmas cookies
Liv: Gingerbread

WHEN IT COMES DOWN TO MAKING A DESSERT FOR YOURSELF, DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE?
Kaye: When I am baking for myself - just chocolate chip cookies. The last time I made them I baked chocolate chip and m&m cookies with my grandson.
Liv: Maybe because I work with cake I don’t crave cake. When I want dessert I make Flan or I pick up a fruit pie from the bakery.

HAVE YOU EVER HAD A GOOD OLD FASHION FOOD FIGHT?
Kaye: No. Even as a kid we didn’t fight with food (just for it). It was too important- we never thought we’d get enough. That’s what happens when you have 10 brothers and sisters.
Liv: I’ve never had a food fight either -but I don’t think being an only child is an excuse.

Kaye and Liv Hansen run the Riviera Bakehouse in Ardsley, NY. Learn more about the bakery here.

And for more about The Whimsical Bakehouse cookbooks and recipes, click here.

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