By Lucia Rivera, VRG Intern

At Verdine, a fully vegan restaurant in Houston, Texas, Anayeli Camacho experiments, expresses her creativity, and learns through decorating cakes. Many factors have to be taken into account for the assembly and decoration of cakes, but there is a central focus on expression for Camacho.

     “It’s really just about expression. For a strawberry cake you could put strawberry jam in the middle and then you could put strawberry powder in the buttercream and then assemble it with that and then decorate it. Probably put cut up strawberries on top and you could put the jam on top too. Your creativity really has to just bounce out. In this profession, there’s no holding back from your creativity. You just have to let it out and make colors pop. That’s the main thing with desserts; Usually I make the colors pop. You’ve gotta make the cake pop. Make it ‘wow,’” Camacho said.

     In order to complete cake designs, Camacho named multiple key materials and tools, including “the turntable, the offset spatula, [and] the piping bags.” Camacho’s favorite tools are the piping bags and decoration tips that she uses to make florets on cakes. Decoration tips are made in many different sizes and patterns and can be bought at a variety of stores.

      “[Materials can be found at] Walmart, Target, and Home Goods and then there’s Ace Mart. It’s a restaurant shop [and has] all the equipment you would need in the kitchen. They have great options for turntables and offset spatulas, and I think they have piping tips. But the stuff that I have for me [to use] I got from Walmart. It was pretty cheap [and] it worked the same.”

     In addition to specific materials, certain ingredients are essential for cake decoration. As a vegan cake decorator, there are specific substitute ingredients that Camacho uses to complete her cakes.

      “For the buttercream we use Earth Balance, [as] the shortening. And then we make Swiss meringue. We melt sugar with water and we heat that up and while the buttercream and shortening are mixing we add it to that. And then for the cake we use GF (Gluten Free) one to one flour. I like that personally; it’s a good flour. And we use Ener-G, a vegan egg replacer, or we use Just Egg quite a bit for the egg replacer. We like using oat milk, [which is] the best for any dessert just because it’s thicker,” Camacho said. 

     Camacho also uses ingredients that will incorporate color into her frostings, which she highlights as an important part of cake decoration.

      “[Color] makes the cake pop. it gives it a layer. Because the cake is flat and then you put things on top of it and it pops, and the color pops even more. It gives it contrast, it pops out from what the buttercream color is,” Camacho explained.

     Besides making use of color to make designs eye-catching, Camacho suggests that anyone who wishes to work with cake decoration experiment throughout the process. Personally, she experiments and practices florets and a dripping effect for her cakes.

      “It’s about experimenting, but understanding that when you’re experimenting you’re also making changes to something that probably won’t be able to go back to what it was. Just thinking about all of those factors that come into it and just practicing. Going and trying and then seeing what happens and if it doesn’t come out the way that you wanted then just know that you can try again the next time,” Camacho said.

Readers may also be interested in

https://www.vrg.org/journal/vj2016issue4/2016_issue4_vegan_cake.php

https://www.vrg.org/blog/2018/08/08/ashleys-vegan-gluten-free-wedding-cake/

https://www.vrg.org/fsupdate/fsu20023/fsu20023fshotline.htm