When the aroma of freshly baked goods wafts from the oven, it's not just our taste buds that are awakened—our hearts and souls are too. This episode, we're joined by Rae Anderson, the admirable cake artist from Cakes by Rae Anderson, who not only dazzles on shows like Holiday Wars but also carries the warmth of her Guyanese and Venezuelan roots. We toast to her significant milestones, empathize with her recent loss, and delve into how setting intentions can be as intricate and vital as the layers of a well-crafted cake.
As we swap stories of kitchen trials and triumphs, I reveal the seed that blossomed into my own dessert catering business—a seed planted by family, nurtured by my stepfather's communal spirit, and watered by the shared joy of food. Rae and I examine the sweet influence of role models and the therapeutic embrace of baking, inviting listeners to consider how food can mend not just hunger but the soul's deeper cravings. Our conversation is a blend of fond memories and forward-looking aspirations, spiced with the understanding that our culinary creations do more than fill plates—they fill lives.
This heart-to-heart isn't just about sugar and flour; it's a deeper exploration of how creativity can be a conduit for healing. Rae's excitement for foster care and her journey to cake artistry illustrate how passions can evolve into life's work, even when it's least expected. We discuss the delicate art of juggling parenting with personal pursuits, emphasizing the need for intentional living over relentless busyness. This episode is a testament to the resilience found in community and the comfort food provides, symbolizing a feast of creativity and empathy laid out for all to savor.
Remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Share the episodes and let's chat in the comments.
Support the Cake Therapy Foundation:
1. Cake Therapy - Cake Therapy (thecaketherapyfoundation.org)
2 Buy Me A Coffee : The Cake Therapy Foundation (buymeacoffee.com)
3. Buy The Book: Cake Therapy: How Baking Changed My Life https://a.co/d/76dZ5T0
Follow Sugarspoon Desserts on all social media platforms @sugarspoondesserts
When the aroma of freshly baked goods wafts from the oven, it's not just our taste buds that are awakened—our hearts and souls are too. This episode, we're joined by Rae Anderson, the admirable cake artist from Cakes by Rae Anderson, who not only dazzles on shows like Holiday Wars but also carries the warmth of her Guyanese and Venezuelan roots. We toast to her significant milestones, empathize with her recent loss, and delve into how setting intentions can be as intricate and vital as the layers of a well-crafted cake.
As we swap stories of kitchen trials and triumphs, I reveal the seed that blossomed into my own dessert catering business—a seed planted by family, nurtured by my stepfather's communal spirit, and watered by the shared joy of food. Rae and I examine the sweet influence of role models and the therapeutic embrace of baking, inviting listeners to consider how food can mend not just hunger but the soul's deeper cravings. Our conversation is a blend of fond memories and forward-looking aspirations, spiced with the understanding that our culinary creations do more than fill plates—they fill lives.
This heart-to-heart isn't just about sugar and flour; it's a deeper exploration of how creativity can be a conduit for healing. Rae's excitement for foster care and her journey to cake artistry illustrate how passions can evolve into life's work, even when it's least expected. We discuss the delicate art of juggling parenting with personal pursuits, emphasizing the need for intentional living over relentless busyness. This episode is a testament to the resilience found in community and the comfort food provides, symbolizing a feast of creativity and empathy laid out for all to savor.
Remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Share the episodes and let's chat in the comments.
Support the Cake Therapy Foundation:
1. Cake Therapy - Cake Therapy (thecaketherapyfoundation.org)
2 Buy Me A Coffee : The Cake Therapy Foundation (buymeacoffee.com)
3. Buy The Book: Cake Therapy: How Baking Changed My Life https://a.co/d/76dZ5T0
Follow Sugarspoon Desserts on all social media platforms @sugarspoondesserts
Welcome to the Cake Therapy podcast a slice of joy and healing, with your host, Dr Altricia Foster. This is a heartwarming and uplifting space that celebrates the transformative power of baking therapy. The conversations will be a delightful blend of inspirational stories, expert insights and practical baking tips. Each episode will take listeners on a journey of self-discovery, emotional healing and connection through the therapeutic art of baking. There's something here for everyone, so lock in and let's get into it.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone, welcome back to the Cake Therapy podcast, your slice of joy and healing. So today we have an amazing guest, someone that I've been intrigued by for the last 18 months or so, and I'm excited to have her join us today. So let me tell you something about this guest today. So if you turn on your TVs right and you go to the food network, you'll see this dope cake artist. She's currently on Holiday Wars on the Food Network. She's a proud Island girl like myself. She hails from Guyana and Venezuela. She's written seven novels, her cakes are divine and I'm excited to have Ray Anderson from Cakes by Ray.
Speaker 2:Welcome, hello, good morning. Yes, girl. So first of all, I want to express my deepest condolence, because I know that my producer mentioned that you recently had a death in your family, and me and my listeners want to say, oh, truly sorry, we are, we are. You know about that loss for you. So, really, deepest condolences from us, thank you, thank you, and then we witness you with your birthday turn up. Tell me, girl, so you recently had a big birthday. How was it?
Speaker 3:It was quite lovely. It was a very intimate dinner amongst friends and, of course, there was cake and it was. It was just amazing. It was very good energy, very good vibes. I think that as we get older, we tend to undermine that your birthday is when you celebrate. It's a ritual form of behavior.
Speaker 3:You know we have this cake. You sing a song, you know and it's very important, you know that we set our intentions up for the next year for the things that are going to rain down. So it was. It was just a great experience. A lot of my closest long term friends were there and it was beautiful.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, it's important to have those close friends around you, especially since, like, there's so much good, so many good things happening to you Towards the end of the year and you know, with this loss, so it's like a lot of things right. You have the process, layers of information, of emotions as you're going through. So how are you doing? Because you have the food network, you have this loss. They had this big birthday mentally. How is Ray?
Speaker 3:You know, I feel great. You know life it's, it's like this ocean right, and you can't fight against the waves. You can't, you know, try to swim back to shore. You have to kind of just flow with everything that's throwing away, and that's kind of how you know, I've just been in this space. I did so many years of fighting and, you know, pushing against the tide and sometimes, when you just surrender to what.
Speaker 3:God has for you. You know, everything just falls in line. It doesn't even matter if there's a hiccup along the road or if you feel someone close to you. You know there's a bigger journey ahead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good. I love that. Talk about the surrendering. What is what is surrendering for you? What does that look like?
Speaker 3:Oh my goodness, surrender.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I just I've just learned to be more accepting of things, to detach from those things that you know you find yourself. I have to have this or I have to make this happen. When you detach and you surrender to what you know is in store for you, surrender to, sometimes just walking by faith, it allows for more, it allows for those blessings to come in abundance, exceedingly beyond what you can even imagine, and I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:No, it's okay, I'm not a girl, yeah.
Speaker 3:It's literally what has worked for me now on this journey. I've done the fighting, I've done, you know, the trying to make it all work by myself, and if it doesn't work like that, you know, kind of just surrender to what, what is in, everything else will just come for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. Do you think that your surrendering has led you to the cake wars? Congratulations on that or the way your fund was that for you right?
Speaker 3:It was it now. That was a very challenging experience. I learned a lot. I guess you can say it was a formal surrender. I have been getting contacted by their casting team for the last five or six years.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I'm like, no, no, I had a child. I have a two year old and a five year old, so within that time, I'm juggling these babies, I'm juggling this booming cake business, and it was just always the wrong time. And so my son is a little older now and I was like, well, I'll do it this time. Yeah, and it worked. It worked really well. The cast, the 27 of us, we were amazing together. The energy was really good. I would like to think of us as a family now. I got to make some amazing cake artists who are doing things I never thought you could do with cake and sugar and even cookie, and so I love them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I saw you wrote, you did write that they felt like family. Now, yeah, so, just like me, I'm like if you go on my Instagram page, I have my Jamaican flag waving right. The pride that comes with us being like Islanders. And I see you put your flags. They're waving, we see them. They're prominent. So tell me a little bit more like did you grew up in the islands and, if you did like, tell me about how that works. Growing up in the islands.
Speaker 3:So I didn't grow up in Guyana, I'm actually born here, but my parents, so I guess what is the second generation? My parents are Guyanese my mother and my father and so you know I grew up very much in the culture Guyanese. That you can think of how to do Right, keeping Guyanese Thanksgiving here in my house this year yeah, you know, it's very interesting. My, my grandmother, my paternal grandmother, did cake. She did the lambeth classic cakes that are coming back right.
Speaker 3:And of course you had the typical carola bread, pine tart, cheese tart, those type of things. But I can remember being in the kitchen with her and I was, you know, maybe four or five years old and taking a swipe from the icing and just watching her, you know, make these fantastic cakes and I guess it rubbed off on me. If you would have told me what 30 years ago that I would be doing cakes, I probably would not have believed you.
Speaker 2:I know, I know, I know, but do you think when, like I'm going to, like you said, if someone had told you 30 years ago that you would be doing cakes today, you would have definitely rejected that? Do you think that was a part of your upbringing, with having these island parents? Who's telling you that you need to go in a certain trajectory in terms of your career path? Or talk to me a little bit more about that, my goodness.
Speaker 3:So you know island parents. They do tend to, you know, push you towards doctor, lawyer. You know the things that they believe bring the money. So naturally I am. Actually. When I went I was in high school and I can remember her career day I told one of my professors that I wanted to be an artist and he said you know, you have to do something more viable, you have to do something that's going to ensure you money.
Speaker 3:And I was like, okay, and that stuck with me along with, you know, the pushing and the conditioning of my parents, and so I went to college, majoring in pre-med.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:That didn't last very long. I don't really like physics, but I changed my major to occupational therapy and psychology. So I was double major at Tuskegee University and eventually ended up dropping the occupational therapy and really focusing on the clinical psychology and from there, you know, it kind of had this domino effect. So I ended up leaving Tuskegee in my fourth year and that year, maybe like three or four months later, my stepfather passed, okay, and he was very pivotal to pushing me in the direction of being a creative and being my authentic self, and I'm sorry if I'm going off on a tangent no, no, no, but it was his encouragement that gave me that fire to really pursue my dreams as an artist. Yeah, and so I went to school at Georgia State trying to finish my psychology degree and I ended up switching to art.
Speaker 2:How many semesters did you have left?
Speaker 3:Oh, my goodness, I didn't have. I actually transferred most of my credits. Yeah, I was in my last year. I switched and I ended up finishing with fine art, of concentration in drawing and painting, and I used to do these six to seven foot portraits of people, no-transcript. I just I never thought I would get into food art. I actually did not get into food art until the passing of my paternal grandmother who was the baker, and it was her and a maternal cousin that used to bake. She passed from leukemia and you know, I like to believe that people are always with us, even when they transition, and so I just felt this push from them, just like getting the kitchen learn cakes, because I always knew how to bake.
Speaker 3:I started out doing confections in college and from there, you know, it kind of just catapulted. It was just like you got to learn how to master these cakes and I'm like I ain't got the patience for cake, like let me ice some cupcakes and be done. But one day I was just like, okay, I'm gonna do it. So I go in the kitchen and I'm just working, working, working, trying to figure out this buttercream, trying to figure out how to ice these cakes and make them sturdy and stay together. Of course they were falling apart and I would. It was like a boot camp. I boot camped myself into mastering cake structure and as I mastered the cake structure, I kind of married my knowledge of art with the cakes. You did the cakes, yeah.
Speaker 2:So so in that moment or the passing of your grandmother and you decided to go into the kitchen, do you think that one you were trying to heal from her passing, like you felt like you needed to be in the kitchen to kind of bake through what and reconnect with her? Tell me about that process, Like what were you feeling in those moments?
Speaker 3:I definitely feel like there was some healing and some catharsis going on when I was in the kitchen my grandmother's final years. I wasn't as present as I would have liked to.
Speaker 3:We spoke on the phone but, she never got to see my daughter who was born at the time, and I did carry a lot of guilt after her passing in that regard, and so for me I do feel like there was, there was definitely some healing. I could almost hear her, so maybe it gets off at this point, but I could almost hear her voice telling me yo fix the thing, yeah, yeah, I'm holding me in the kitchen. So it was, like you know, just it was a very interesting experience.
Speaker 3:I feel like she was almost guiding me step by step as I was in the kitchen learning how to do this stuff and I don't know. I'm grateful, yeah, absolutely. I'm grateful that she was able to proceed me and lay that out there for me, because who knows what I would be doing otherwise had I not had that exposure at such an early age. Even you know. I look at my children now. My daughter's always in the kitchen. Mommy, can I help? Can I mix this? Can?
Speaker 3:I do that, and I would not be surprised if she decides to, you know, become a baker. She tells her father all the time I'm not going to work for nobody, I'm gonna work at home. You know, mommy, bake cakes.
Speaker 2:I have one of those in my house because when I got pregnant, I started baking when I became pregnant with my second child, and now she's in the kitchen with me all the time, so I won't be surprised if that's where she goes as well. So you know what? I noticed? That the people who are really, really close to you, ray, they're in food, culinary arts, and proximity does matter, right, and you were close to your stepfather and what's? Chef Killian, did I pronounce his name right?
Speaker 3:Killian so.
Speaker 2:Killian.
Speaker 1:Killian is nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so he himself was a master chef. Tell me about, tell me about him one, and what's his influence been like on you?
Speaker 3:So my stepfather, he just had this very pivotal role in my life. I didn't grow up with my dad, we moved to Atlanta and so my father was in Florida doing what he did and my mother remarried. So my stepfather was there and he, just he stepped in in a way that most people wouldn't believe or understand for stepfather. He never made me feel like I didn't literally come from him. Yeah, he embraced me as his oldest daughter and so he was just. He was very nurturing, very patient, very understanding. We had an open line of communication that you tend to not always have with Caribbean parents, and so, because he was American, the the cultural connection is different.
Speaker 3:The connection was extremely different and it's something that I am eternally grateful for. I think he played a pivotal role in my healing, just as a child, and I just I'm so grateful for him being in my life. He passed away. He had a heart attack. He's very unexpected. They were on a family vacation and he passed unexpectedly. As it turns out, he actually needed to go and get a sense procedure done and he didn't do that. He opted instead to spend vacation with his family and he ended up passing away. But I genuinely believe that he was put here to help me and my siblings heal from our past traumas and be that figure that we needed as children. I think it's very important to have that masculine male figure in your life, even if it's not a father, some type of father figure that can help steering, guide you and keep you from having those daddy issues Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, I absolutely agree with you there. So you did mention and it's up to you to go however deep you want to, however surface talking about healing from childhood trauma Food. Do you think food has helped?
Speaker 3:you and how, oh goodness. So just to tie in my stepfather he loved to cook and he loved bringing people together. He loved to keep functions at the house. So our house was that house, right.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:Everyone would come for Thanksgiving, for 4th of July, for whatever the occasion was. And after his passing, hindsight is 50-50, right. So I noticed that there is some type of communal healing that takes place when you have a gathering with people and you're able to really connect with food. And I genuinely believe there is a form of healing that happens especially when you think about dessert, and I don't mean just eating, because you're going through something, but just getting together with your family and having that peace and that energy around you and being able to connect together while you eat. I think it's very important. Cake even is extremely ephemeral, but it's meaningful. Right, we do these things and it's like, oh, it's just the cake, but this cake could be forming a core memory for someone.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:They're going to remember this for the rest of their life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah OK.
Speaker 3:I don't know if I answered your question. No, no, you didn't.
Speaker 2:That's fine. That's fine, like I said it's however you want to interpret how I asked that question. I'm totally appreciative of where you went with it, but I know that your stepfather, your grandmother and you going into the kitchen and pushing yourself to be able to learn how to build cake structure, making sure your buttercream doesn't fall apart, but you talk on your website. You speak about selling chocolate-covered strawberries from your dorm. Is this when Cakes by Ray was born?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the chocolate-covered strawberries very interesting. I was in a relationship at the time and my boyfriend was a strawberry frenetic we both were, and it was his birthday and I really wanted to do these strawberries for him pro college student. Of course, I couldn't afford Cherie's berries, so I'm like I have to figure out how to do this. So I went and bought the. What is it called? The chocolate Chocolate mouth, the chocolate, yeah, the pan thing whatever that is.
Speaker 3:I bought that and I'm doing this stuff in my dorm room, melting down the chocolates, dipping the strawberries. It came out really great. I did an assortment tuxedos, some covered with nuts, ok, and it was for love, right, and it was a hit. I made him maybe two or three dozen and it was right before Valentine's and I just got this crazy idea to try to market it on school campus for Valentine's Day and it really took off. I mean, I was extremely busy and my first clients were my classmates on campus and I don't want to say that's where Cakes by Randison was born because there were so many other things I was doing prior to that, but it was what kind of set the wheels in motion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And so I started doing catering and I offered desserts, confections, cupcakes and strawberries and such, and I would do it for every holiday I'd come home.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't even market to the people in Atlanta, and it was just one of those things that I kept under my belt. I'm like, well, I don't know what I'm ever going to do with this, but it was there, so it was the seed.
Speaker 2:How does it feel to have lots of things under your belt Because you're like, oh yeah, it's one of those things I kept under my belt Must be amazing, so yeah, but so how was Cakes by Ray Anderson born then?
Speaker 3:I want to say it started with that push to get in the kitchen and learn.
Speaker 3:Cakes. I've been passing on. My grandmother and my stepfather had passed around that time as well, but I guess for me it was trying to make sense of all of the things that I had accumulated in terms of skills Like, ok, I know how to draw, I know how to cook, I know how to do these confections, what am I going to do with all of this? And it's very interesting. When you're young, you tend to feel like, ok, none of this makes sense, none of this has a reason. But everything on your journey ties together. Everything is for a reason. It's to propel you into the next phase, and I can genuinely say that now, at 34 years old, I'm like that all makes sense now. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:But go ahead, yeah. So it's like when I think about you, like just listening to you, I'm thinking here goes another all-round creative right. She's actually has a ton of things under her belt, from portrait painting to baking art, to being an author. I would like to know, like, how, as just your fine arts background, your painting background, how does it? What's your approach to your cakes, having had that background?
Speaker 3:I want to say because of the background. In fine art I approach cakes like a blank canvas. So you have this chrome coat of icing and there I'm just kind of looking at it as OK, you have all this potential right and I am about to create a magnificent work of art. But of course there's the planning, there's the sketching and such. But I want to say, because of that fine art background, I know how to design my cakes a little bit more, to an extent that let me find the proper words there is a cohesiveness that comes from that fine art background.
Speaker 3:When you're in art school, they're constantly hammering all the creativity out of you. Is it interesting? Does it flow? Does it do this? And so I can hear my professor and all my classmates critiquing me in my head when I'm making these cakes. I literally approach them as OK. When it gets critiqued, what is it that's going to be said? And so I just think that it's really important to have that balance in the what is the word? It's at the tip of my tongue. It's important to have the visual balance in cakes. I think early on, when you're starting out, you tend to just want to throw a lot of stuff on the cake and, ooh, it's so pretty and shiny. But it's important to have a balance. Do we have a relief here where there's space, and relief from all of this chaos that's happening over here? There has to be that balance and I think art school really did help me get that into my cake world.
Speaker 2:When I look at your cakes, I really do see. I see balance and flow and I see how meticulous you are. So now, learning that you have that art background, now I can see the cakes, I can see where Ray Anderson's cakes are coming from, which is really really beautiful to be. You know, let me, let me, let me, it was really really beautiful. I'll edit that out. So do you think, then, that once you're creative right, it's easy to transpose your artistic side into your cake designs?
Speaker 3:I want to say yes to that question, but I can't say yes because when you're taking briefs from clients and you have, you know, some restrictions on what you can do, it's not easy, right. It's like this push and pull as a creative to, you know, be able to express yourself creatively versus what the client wants, right. And so over the years that I've been baking, I just I have had, you know, some struggle with that. I guess you know I'm entering into what my sixth year of Cakes by Ray Anderson, and it's not been as difficult just because I'm more selective in the clients that I choose. You know, on my website there's this very brief disclaimer that I'm an artist first and so I don't typically take on clients that don't allow me some degree of creative control.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But yeah, it's just, I guess, about finding that in between space, where you enjoy what you're doing and you can also please your clients.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're feeding your own soul in this process. So talk to us a little bit about your cake process. Where do you start and how do you end at you know, these beautiful cakes?
Speaker 3:When I'm working with a client or just for myself.
Speaker 2:You can do both girl Tell me how you get at them. Because of course, you get from your clients inspirations, right, right, tell me that journey.
Speaker 3:So my clients, they tend to be, you know, creative as well, and so it does allow me again that wiggle room to be able to, you know, throw maybe an outlandish out there, out there. But I want to say it starts with, you know, whatever's in the brief right, and so I start to dissect this brief, especially if it's one that I'm really interested in.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And now, you know, send them a code and it'll be like three or four different prices for them to choose from. Yeah, based on these designs that I came up with in my head. And once we get back to narrowing down what they want, then it's sketch time. So I'll sketch out a do a digital sketch, full color, so they can really see what it's going to look like, especially if it's not, you know, like a sculpted cake. You know you don't sketch, but just so they can have an idea or some type of concept of what I'm going to execute. And then I just go from there. If I need to pivot, I pivot as best as I can and still create what they're asking for. That's another thing I'm grateful to art school, for, you know, there's happy accidents and so I'm very good at making a mistake. Look like an intentional part of the work.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But that is when it's client focus.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:When it's not client focus and I get to just be myself, I will brainstorm, I will research. You know, there's a whole nother process that takes place where I'm basically over complicating it, making it as difficult as I can to execute, and then I might try to execute. So, for example, thanksgiving, I really want an orange peacock. Okay.
Speaker 1:And a piece.
Speaker 3:I don't know if I'm going to do that, but I feel like I'm going to be held accountable now for going. But I want to do like a sculpted peacock, and so I'm like, how can I make this interesting? Yeah, I don't want to just cover it with finding. I don't want to just, you know, make it this standing structure. I want very detailed work. Maybe each feather is made of wafer paper and some sort of sugar work. Maybe I'm curling the feathers, maybe, you know, I don't know I want it to be insane. Bring it on. Thanksgiving is in another week, so I really should be prepping now. Yeah, bring it on, but I don't know. I just I tend to go outlandish when it's no restriction.
Speaker 3:And I think that is the best way for me to create. I'm still trying to net out all the clients that will accept me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm so. I look forward to that peacock. By the way, I do that too. I announced the thing even when it was it's just a thought, because it's forcing me to do it. So that peacock girl, so you know, on your website you talk about, and I'm going to quote you here right Baking is more than a mundane act. Right Baking is more than a mundane act, but an experience that invites all the senses to dine. How has your career path impacted your life, personally and professionally?
Speaker 3:I want to say that baking has allowed me to connect with so many different souls. Baking has allowed me to learn so much about how to handle people, how to genuinely be of service and remove my ego, shed myself and genuinely be of service to these people. Even though you might think of this 50th celebration as, oh, it's just the 50th, oh, we're just doing, or oh, it's just a birthday, oh, it's just the wedding, it, like I said in the beginning, it is these core memories that you create, and I have learned so much just from these interactions with my clients, interactions with other people in the industry, just how to be a genuine soul, how to remove myself and just be of service. It's a work in the service industry. Of course, you're making money, but it's not just that. You're going to be a part of these people's lives in some form of fashion.
Speaker 3:They're photographing this cake. They might be videoing it. Whatever the case may be, they have invited you to be a part of their intimate moment. So it's extremely meaningful what we do, and I just give me a second. I'm so. You want me to continue.
Speaker 2:You can continue.
Speaker 3:I just there's a joy that comes with baking. There is I don't want to go too far off tangent, but it has allowed me to step into like being a true creative, and I get to wake up every day and create, and that is so meaningful. Creativity is a form of feminine energy and I have been allowed, permitted by the grace of God, to be able to wake up and tap into this, and not just from a creative stance, but it has allowed me to soften. A lot of people that may know me from high school or my earlier years I was very I was very abrasive, and that had a lot to do with the things that I hadn't healed from.
Speaker 3:And through this journey and making cakes and being a part of these intimate moments with my clients and meeting all these amazing artists that work with food. It has allowed me to heal from the things of my past and really be able to invoke or spread that love through sugar art? Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if any of that makes sense.
Speaker 2:You know, what I've noticed I too was an abrasive girl and I tell that story in the book that I just wrote but I've recognized after having many of these conversations is that a lot of us bake from a certain place and just baking, or the artistry itself, has softened us, has led us into becoming more empathetic, understanding and more nurturing. So kudos to you and I would say kudos to me as well. That's the power of this cake thing, right? So that's cake therapy how baking changed my life. You're baking with a purpose. It's purposeful work, even if it's transforming your life, my life or someone else who's listening. So the cake therapy foundation that I lead is it challenges women and girls who are systems impacted to take on the art of baking to help them heal from their traumas, and this is a good segue.
Speaker 2:To be completely honest, it's like, yeah, you talk about the power of your baking and how it's softened. You and I know that some of these girls are listening Tell my girls or not my girls tell these ladies who are listening how to overcome, how them overcome some of the things that they're going through and the importance of having patience in taking out these milestones and struggles.
Speaker 3:I want to say trust the process, even if I can tie it back to cake. If your cake looks a mess, let's parallel this to maybe life itself your life your cake could look a complete mess. It's toppling over, not holding itself up. You think it's just gonna crash and burn. Trust the process. One day you're gonna wake up and everything is going to make sense. Everything is gonna be for a reason, especially if you are on a healing path. You are healing so that you can reach other souls that need to be healed. If you get in this kitchen and you feel like it's impossible, I don't have the patience to sit here and turn this cake and I sit just slow down, soften up your touch. Eventually, everything is gonna come together and it's gonna be this beautiful masterpiece.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So that is just one of those things that I can literally say is adjacent to my life journey, and I have a lot of trauma. I don't know how much time you have out here, but I have a lot of trauma and I'm an open book. I am completely okay with getting into it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Just trust the process.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Everything is going to make sense in the end. And if you do the work, if you are intentional about doing the healing work, if you are intentional about holding yourself accountable, it's going to align. Everything is gonna align later on down the line.
Speaker 2:Yeah, everything is going to be aligned or be in line later down the line. What powerful words. And look at Ray Anderson guys. She survived it all Right, she's coming through it, her cakes are awesome. She's here to tell her story. She's raising her kids, her beautiful kids. She talks about her girl in the kitchen. So that's amazing. Thank you for sharing those words, ray. But there are many, many levels to Ray. You know Ray wears a ton of hats. Ray writes novels. Can we talk about that girl Like what, when did?
Speaker 3:that come from. You know, I think every creative outlet is a form of healing and there were some things that I had to heal from before stepping into the next journey of my life. So I started with the books. I've always been, you know, a writer, but I never pursued publishing anything until within the past year, I wrote this romance novel and it was a really great story, but it was all over the place Poor character development. Just you know how it is when you're stepping into a new creative space and you have no idea what you're doing in no direction. So I put that one out and then I put out another one, and it was a series of stories about, you know, these people that were connected and the writing just got better. Just, it build on top of one another and I think I'm at my seventh or eighth, but I have taken a break from writing. I wanna say I've taken a break from putting them out. I'm still writing. I think I'm writing my best seller right now.
Speaker 2:Oh, good yes.
Speaker 3:I do want. I would like to put out a book on sugar art, so that is the next step for me. But the writing itself is very cathartic. It very much highlighted the things that I needed to fix, and I am going into foster care soon, and so I don't think that it's possible to help others heal if you yourself are not feeling. And of course, healing is not linear. So we're always going to be, you know, healing or fixing, or you know that's the journey in life, right? But there was a lot of things that I had to repair or I had to work on or I had to let go before I could get to this space, and I'm very excited for what the next year holds.
Speaker 3:I think it's going to put me on the path of what my soul's purpose is. And I would just say, when it comes to, you know, healing and therapy, creative outlets for me and for so many others around me, has been pivotal to growth, you know. And so, whether you know it's cake making, whether it's drawing, whether you know it's interior design, whether it's writing, whatever you're doing, you know it's meaningful, not just beyond what you're doing for your clients or what you're doing for you know, just your visual aesthetic. It's meaningful because somewhere inside of you your soul is rejoicing. Yes, your soul, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Your soul is saying yes, it is.
Speaker 3:So yeah, I don't even remember what the question was. Please edit this out.
Speaker 2:No, who will do? You know what, ray, I'm actually. I'm very amazed by you, to be honest. So just watching you on Instagram as I was already amazed, you know I was really moved by your work. I moved like first when I saw you, then I saw you drop the book and I'm like they're levels to this girl, and then just hearing you speak and tell your story it's moved me further. You know, I'm genuinely amazed by you, the things that you do and I want to know, like, how do you manage all of this with being a mom? How are you doing it?
Speaker 3:I don't know and I want to say you know it's super woman behavior, but it's not I don't want to put that out there that you have to be this super human being in order to achieve the things that you once achieved. One of the things that I've truly learned how to do is master time, and you know, if we really want to get into it, time never really is it's you know just focusing on the present.
Speaker 3:But my children, they're young and so they thrive on a schedule, so I put them on a schedule. You know it's 7.30. It's time for bath. Prior to that it's dinner time, after 7.30, bed time, and so you know, after that time, you know, mom and dad, we have our time to do whatever. If we want to just admire a wall in the house, we can do that, because no children interrupting us, but I don't know.
Speaker 3:So when I'm not as busy with the cakes, I use that time to focus on some other creative outlet, whether it be, writing. It just really genuinely depends on the mood and the schedule.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:If I'm booked with cakes, I cannot touch a book, so I have to focus on my clients first. But it's like a downtime week where I don't really have much going on. I can, you know, focus on a book or I you know, focus on maybe drawing a sketch or something. That's really it. I want to say that I just I guess I've mastered managing my energy. That's what I'm saying Not necessarily time, Just managing my energy when I have to go ahead?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and do you find? Then I'm summed it up do you find that? Do you have to stay busy? Or yeah, tell me how that works. Do you find that you're switching between your art forms just to stay busy, or no?
Speaker 3:I don't like being busy. I don't have to stay busy and I don't like to be busy. I don't like to feel as though I have no other choice but to do this. I just go with what I feel. I'm very loose with my creative outlets.
Speaker 2:So Okay.
Speaker 3:I'm pretty loose when I create as well. You know I'm very gestural, and so I guess I'm very gestural with creativity. Like I don't like to feel as though, oh, I gotta do this, I gotta be on the run. I actually enjoy sitting and being quiet and doing nothing and maybe enjoying a cup of tea reading a book from someone else. I don't like to be busy at all actually.
Speaker 3:I don't like the rush that comes with it, but, in the same vein, I do wear many hats and it's genuinely just the things that I've always expressed just coming to fruition, making manifest themselves. I started writing when I was young and it just got put on the back burner as I moved into another creative passion. And then, you know, here it comes resurfacing again. So, yeah, yeah, I don't like busy.
Speaker 2:So tell me, how do you manage the success of cakes by Ray Anderson? You know? Did you envision this for yourself?
Speaker 3:You know, I didn't. I did not think that I was going to be a cake artist, but I did always aspire to have some sort of communal space like a bakery, or I don't even wanna say a bakery Maybe like a coffee shop where you know people could come together. Maybe you know spoken word and perhaps we serve you know treats, bakery items, but I never envisioned it getting to the space that it's been in. I bake full time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so that in itself is difficult and it requires a ton of strategy, it requires a ton of work to keep your business, you know, floating, especially in this economy.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:But I would have never thought, you know, from that seed that was planted to me that day in high school, when they said you need to do something more viable, I always thought, okay, well, I'm just gonna be a doctor, yeah, and I never could have imagined you know that I would get to this space and I'm so grateful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah. So what's in the words? You know for you what's next in the words.
Speaker 3:You know I wanna say brick and mortar, but I'm not 100% sure. Maybe I'll take a page from you, altricia, and maybe you know this aligns somehow with the fostering, or maybe there's some type of shelter where I'm teaching people how to create which should be you know. You know, I do know that there was this void that was not completely filled by cakes, that I needed to fill with people and just impacting them directly, and so hence the, you know, fostering.
Speaker 3:Which is just a step on the journey that is ahead. But there has to be a way, and I was just speaking to someone about this. My purpose with these hands can't be to just create beautiful things. These hands, they create beautiful things, but what do those beautiful things do? Who do they impact? How can I marry the two?
Speaker 3:And so that's the space that I'm in right now Just trying to figure out how to bring all of these tools in my arsenal into helping those in need. That, you know, may never see their parents again. That, you know, maybe come from an abused home situation. Maybe it's a woman that has, you know, had someone put their hands on her, who knows? But one of the things that I can take away genuinely from just being a creative is that it does have some sort of healing to it, and I want as much of the world to know about that as possible.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I have some things in the works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's good. You really sit in a place of purpose. It resonates with all every word that you've shared here today, and this has been like such a great slice of joy and healing for our listeners. And, ray, I'm really really honored that you chose to speak with me about you and trusted me with the conversation. I'm absolutely honored and pleased, I'm excited and I look forward. I look forward to seeing your growth and I look forward to seeing the purpose driven life that you can. You know you continue to live, and so I'm grateful that you joined us today.
Speaker 3:I want to say the same. Thank you so much for inviting me. You are a joy to speak with. We need to exchange numbers. We're going to be good friends, yeah, yeah yeah, I get that.
Speaker 2:So our lives definitely parallel each other somewhat and I get that in the conversation. So I'm dying to hear your story while I dish mine out in 990 pages. So I'm really excited about this connection. It's something that I looked forward to and I've looked forward to over the last couple of months. So thank you for listening us. It was fun to talk to Ray. This has been the Cake Therapy Podcast your slice of joy and healing, and see you next time.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in to the Cake Therapy Podcast. Your support means the world to us. Let us know what you thought about today's episode in the comment section. Remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcast and if you found the conversation helpful, please share it with a friend. Also, follow Sugar Spoon Desserts on all social media platforms. We invite you to support Cake Therapy and the work we do with our foundation by clicking on the buy me a coffee link in the description or by visiting the Cake Therapy website and making a donation. All your support will go towards the Cake Therapy Foundation and the work we are doing to help women and girls. Thanks again for tuning in and we'll catch you on the next episode.