Picture yourself savoring a slice of cake, each flavor telling a story of transformation and resilience – that's the essence of our latest chat with Olivia Cerletti. From the sunny vibes of California to the cultural complexity of Zurich, we unwrap Olivia's life chapters, revealing how her journey infused her cake artistry with a tapestry of tales. Her roots in political science, a discerning palate, and a name that captures the narratives we cherish, "A Cake Story" reflects the confluence of diverse experiences shaping her path to becoming a cherished mother, artist, and entrepreneur.
As we meander through Olivia's world, we unearth the solace and salvation found in the flour and frosting of cake design. This episode isn't just about baking; it's a celebration of the profound impact culinary creativity has on our well-being and family bonds. We delve into the serene art that Olivia crafts, drawing from her life's order and elegance, and share how cake artistry can be a mirror to one's upbringing, offering comfort and connection.
We round off our episode by considering the broader strokes of creativity, ethics, and sustainability in the baking realm. With Olivia's insights, we ponder the power of art in both healing and entrepreneurship, and how her story inspires us to find our own canvas for expression. Additionally, we delve into the delicate balance of fostering an ethical and eco-conscious cake community. Tune in for a nourishing dose of inspiration, art, and, of course, cake.
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
Picture yourself savoring a slice of cake, each flavor telling a story of transformation and resilience – that's the essence of our latest chat with Olivia Cerletti. From the sunny vibes of California to the cultural complexity of Zurich, we unwrap Olivia's life chapters, revealing how her journey infused her cake artistry with a tapestry of tales. Her roots in political science, a discerning palate, and a name that captures the narratives we cherish, "A Cake Story" reflects the confluence of diverse experiences shaping her path to becoming a cherished mother, artist, and entrepreneur.
As we meander through Olivia's world, we unearth the solace and salvation found in the flour and frosting of cake design. This episode isn't just about baking; it's a celebration of the profound impact culinary creativity has on our well-being and family bonds. We delve into the serene art that Olivia crafts, drawing from her life's order and elegance, and share how cake artistry can be a mirror to one's upbringing, offering comfort and connection.
We round off our episode by considering the broader strokes of creativity, ethics, and sustainability in the baking realm. With Olivia's insights, we ponder the power of art in both healing and entrepreneurship, and how her story inspires us to find our own canvas for expression. Additionally, we delve into the delicate balance of fostering an ethical and eco-conscious cake community. Tune in for a nourishing dose of inspiration, art, and, of course, cake.
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. 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. Today's guest comes to you all the way from Switzerland. She's from Zurich. This American-born, now Swiss, cake artist is known for her ephemeral artistic style of cakes. She's highly published and has brought to you cakes such as the soul, the Zaha Hadid. Her cakes are recognizable for her minimalistic approach to cakes. Please welcome the queen of Zurich, the queen of the ACS method, mrs Olivia Sirledi, owner of the cake story. Welcome, olivia. Yay, that was really nice.
Speaker 3:Welcome Olivia. Yay, that was really nice. Oh my God, that was so smooth. I didn't even know that stuff about me, but wonderful, thank you. Thanks, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you for joining me. Let me tell you, listeners, I met Olivia this year by divine, I believe so and I had the pleasure of traveling to Zurich to take her K class, her inaugural K class. I was there with her for a whole week. Let me tell you about a week of hospitality and fun and it was a pleasure getting to know her and I want you to get to know her too. So my, I want to say to Olivia like how has it been since we left? Are you having withdrawal?
Speaker 3:symptoms. Yes, it feels empty and I miss all the. I still can hear the laughter and the kicking, and it's been. It was just so wonderful. It was such such a wonderful group of women and I couldn't have asked for a better dynamic. It was just, it was sensational, it really was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was. It was elevate. Workshop was the best. Believe me, I totally enjoyed myself. I learned so much. So, like, who is Olivia, though? You know we had the opportunity to get to know you and get to know who you are, see how you interact like you are so fun, but tell our listeners I want to know, like your early life and how you describe yourself, so just dive in, tell us.
Speaker 3:Right. You know, it's so funny because I rarely get that question about my early life, and it's strange because my early life is so different from where I'm at now. It couldn't have been a more polar opposite. I am, as you said, I'm American born. I'm actually a native Californian. I am as you said, I'm American born. I'm actually a native Californian.
Speaker 3:I was born a stone's throw in San Diego from the Mexican border. I was born in National City, california, and my father is Mexican-American and his whole side of the family actually comes from Imperial Beach in San Diego. His whole side of the family actually comes from Imperial Beach in San Diego, which is a very heavily dominated Chicano district of people, and my mother is French-Madagascan. She's from Madagascar and came to the States when she was 18. A map that Diego is similar to the name of the city that she was in in Madagascar, which is Diego Torres. So she thought, oh Diego, san Diego must be the same.
Speaker 3:And just ended up in San Diego and my parents ran into each other on the streets. There was a love at first sight and not even being able to speak each other's language, but the language of love, and then that was that evolved from that and that is where my life started was actually living in a border town. Um, I have an amazing, sensational family. My parents are very warm and encouraging, we're a very close-knit family and that just had such a huge impact on my life and who I am today, not only as a human, as an artist, as a mom, as a business owner. I really think that the influence that my parents had on us as kids growing up in Southern California is really magical. That's a lot of who I am. The influences of my parents and the cultural upbringing and that sort of that tapestry really plays an important role in me. And then, after that, my parents. Unfortunately, the love didn't last and they divorced and my mother ended up moving to Washington DC where I spent the first nine years of my life actually living in.
Speaker 3:Georgetown in DC. My mother, who is multilingual, ended up working for the US State Department as a foreign service officer, and that is how we ended up traveling all around the world, living in different countries, and that's how I actually ended up in Switzerland as a California, San Diego native to living in Switzerland. So that's how.
Speaker 2:I ended up here. So how was that transition for you? I mean for you for moving into sunny, for moving from sunny California to, you know, europe, living now in Switzerland.
Speaker 3:How was?
Speaker 2:that transition.
Speaker 3:For me it was so surreal I will never forget. I was 12 the first time, the first time I flew into Zurich and I mean you had that experience looking out the window. I looked out the window, landing in Zurich, and I just saw green and pastures and alps, I mean all stuff that I've never seen before in that sort of content context, content, context. It was just. It was surreal.
Speaker 3:The language was super confusing, um, just being the only brown person in my classroom because my parents put me in the local school, that was very difficult, right, kids are very mean. So I had to deal with a lot of that, um, when I moved here. But you know it really, really again, everything has such a huge influence on my life and it just gave me, you know, survival mode. It gave me how can I adjust, how can I find, navigate myself in a super foreign world with, you know, the Swiss and the way they are and the cold, juxtaposed to growing up in a Mexican African household where there's warmth and love and yelling and hysteria, to quiet little Swiss.
Speaker 2:And so it's just added to my ability to-. I love how you mentioned your history, your heritage. You know Mexican, african household. Tell me a little bit more of how do you describe yourself? You know how do you? See your yeah.
Speaker 3:That's such a funny question because I mean I really identify very closely with my Chicano roots, my Mexican American roots, because my family size is much bigger and because I was born in San Diego, because my mother came to the States alone from Madagascar she was not with my grandfather, stayed behind Her sister, my aunt she ended up going to Italy, marrying an Italian man and setting up her roots in northern Italy, and so my mother really came to San Diego by herself and just absorbed, sort of leaned heavily onto their cultural influences, which then really bled heavily into us as kids, and how she raised us.
Speaker 3:There was a lot of similarities in terms of her Balgazi influence and the temperament and the mothering that comes with being an African mother but that translated so well with Mexican culture. Yeah, so I really heavily identify with my Mexican-American roots because just by virtue of numbers I mean I have hundreds of cousins and we're all super close and the food and the loud and the music and we didn't really spend any time in Madagascar because my mother never took us back just because of the political upheaval and that all stuff. But I mean, growing up I heard lots of stories. My mother is a prolific writer and she loves to write and so she actually has documented her entire childhood, growing up, her entire youth, growing up in Madagascar and what that like was for her the safety net of the islands and moving going into Europe and going into the United States. It was very traumatic for her, more than it was for her, I don't have that experience.
Speaker 2:So I think I share a similar story to your mom because, you know, I'm an immigrant from a developed island, a developing island myself, while migrating to the US, so I could understand the trauma and the fear that came with her moving from Madagascar to the US. But then, like in terms of identity for you, olivia, tell me about food in, you know, in the Chicano heritage of the community. Like, has it influenced you in your baking?
Speaker 3:I mean that's actually very interesting and you got a chance to meet a little part of that in Zurich. I mean, the food influence growing up is huge. I don't that goes without saying that the the the effect that food has in Mexican culture and the tapestry is world known, right? I mean there's no arguing that I actually my mother has has written chapters in her diaries about the agony with me when it comes to my what she calls pickiness, my, my food pickiness.
Speaker 3:She couldn't get me to eat anything. The only persons that could get me to eat things were my tias that would make, like you know, frijoles and tortillas and that kind of stuff for me. But it was like, whatever my mother tried to make something, there was always like aversions and she was super frustrated and she would go crazy and yeah, and I spent actually many, many years thinking god, there's something wrong with me, I'm super picky, I don't like this. And it was only until much later in life, like around 2008, when I was actually working for a. During my university studies, I was working for a French restaurant and we had to have training to sell the wine. So we had like level one sommelier training and the master sommelier who gave us this training told us to take a week off of eating any savory foods and just give our palate sort of a reset so that we could taste the wine. Note.
Speaker 2:Oh, I see.
Speaker 3:Yeah, me being like the curious person was like, oh, I'm going to try that. And then I did that. And then when we were doing like the wine taping, it was like so intense I was getting headaches and everything. And the sommelier said, oh, you know, you're probably a super taster and I'm like a super taster, what is that? And she's like, oh, that's people that hyperly taste things. And it was like suddenly it all crystallized. I was like, that's what that's me. I don't like a lot of foods because I hyperly taste them.
Speaker 3:And I called my mom. I'm like I figured it out and she's like no, no, no, that is not possible. You don't like my food? I'm like, no, mom, I'm a super taster and once I just sort of discovered that about myself. To answer your question about how that interpreted into cake, is that I actually my, my, my flavor profiles are built off of number one, what I can handle in terms of the taste. So I have a very small palette of flavors that I feel comfortable with and in the creating of my recipes I took whatever it is that I really like and sort of reversed and you mirrored that into my cake, along with many hours of study in the art of cake making. So that combined with understanding how that works, but understanding how my, my flavor palette. So just recently I did that with the pistachio cake. I just really liked pistachio gelato, sort of tasted the pistachio gelato and then reverse engineered. How can I recreate that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's. That's really good. So did you is this did you do culinary, culinary arts in college? Tell us a little bit more, because you mentioned no, not at all.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Nope, nope, not a day spent in culinary school. I actually I know people are like what so I actually studied political science with a minor in Middle Eastern comparative politics and international law With a minor in Middle Eastern comparative politics and international law. My dream was to go to law school and to eventually work at the Hague in international law. Because of my mother's proximity to the State Department and just being in those circles, that was just something that I always thought I would end up doing would be working also for the State Department of the SSO, foreign Service Officer and going to law school. It didn't pan out, but while I was at school, I mean I did graduate. That I did. I earned my degree in political science with a minor in Middle Eastern comparative politics.
Speaker 3:But then, while I was studying, I worked in many different hotels and restaurants in Palm Beach, florida, because I went to Florida Atlantic University and it was during that time that I was exposed to the world of culinary and I got a chance to work for five years for Chef Daniel Bouloud at Cafe Bouloud on Palm Beach, where we were extensively trained, like I said, in sommelier but also in all aspects of culinary. As part of the house staff. We had to really understand what was going on back of the house and so he would train all of his staff. And I really had amazing proximity to these amazing culinary artists. So I saw but I didn't get the training obviously, but that sort of sparked that interest.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting. Like yeah, because it's interesting? Because I've been having like several conversations with cake artists and they, most of them, are not, you know, professionally trained um culinary artists. They've had like multiple degrees, right you?
Speaker 3:know, I know, I think I know if I could give a guess why that is like that. It's because so I have an older son and he goes to culinary school, right, and I have a lot of friends from my days at Cafe Bleu that are pastry chefs or chefs that went to culinary school. It is such a intense education. It is very. I mean, it's all hierarchy and process and procedure, and the ability to be creative on your own comes much later.
Speaker 3:Like you have to almost win your morals to step outside and do menu creation and recipe creations. Like first you have to earn it in order to do that, and so there's sort of like that maybe they're not as willing to just step outside the box and do something different, because that's not how it's done. You know where us who are like I don't like the word self-taught, because none of us are really self-taught, but that ventured into baking or cake making, don't come with those restrictions. We're just like, oh, let's try this out. And so you just sort of awaken your inner creativity, because I have a lot of pastry friends that are like that is not how you do it. I'm like yeah, don't you love that?
Speaker 3:you cannot do it that way, like someone always like okay, yeah you get, don't you love that?
Speaker 2:you cannot do it that way, like someone always telling you oh no, you can't. Well, yeah, yes, we can. Um, I love that. Yeah, I love that so many of us from diverse backgrounds enter into caking or venture into caking and and love it and stay and stick with it. You know, there there's something in um, there's something about baking and the stories that come from individuals who tell their own personal stories and their journey. First, um, I would like to know, like, where did the name A Cake Story come from?
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 2:I would also like to know what is Olivia's cake story then, um, venturing from political science to, I mean, from a minor Middle East Eastern. Is it history, you say? Um comparative politics. Yeah, middle Eastern comparative politics. What is your cake story? Where did the name come from and what is your cake story so?
Speaker 3:it's kind of a sad story actually, but a good story. I'm Mexican, so we love good, sad stories. Like you said, I have this degree and I was very career-oriented and wanting to be the good daughter and the good mother and also wanting to do good by myself, which is why I was so driven, also academically very driven. Everyone in my family, all my cousins and my siblings were were all very academically successful, being children of immigrants. Right, this comes with that. You know that drive and that desire because, yeah, right, like we stand on the shoulders your push.
Speaker 3:You know we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors, who or in the well not my father's, because my father is actually from California, but you know they come and they, they work hard and we want to honor that. So, just like everyone else in my family, I went school, I was very dedicated and I was working, and I ended up working and ended up getting a job in Switzerland. I was working in pharmaceuticals, so nothing to do with political science per se, but I was working in the legal department and just building my career and making money and being a good employee, a hard worker, just like my dad taught me, like my mom taught me, and I got married and I had kids, and when I was on my third kid, I was on maternity leave, as it so happens with the corporate world. I was just let go, just thanks, no thanks, and that was rough, that was really really rough that took a huge blow to my, you know, because I identify, you know, through hardworking.
Speaker 3:Being a hard worker is very important to me. What am I going to do? When I was just at home in the postpartum? And then that's when stuff really started to unravel, first starting with my uncle being diagnosed with brain cancer terminal brain cancer there was nothing that could be done for him and then, within a span of six months, my best friend passed away while watching Netflix. She just went into cardiac arrest, her heart gave up on her, and then, six months later, my uncle passed away from brain cancer.
Speaker 3:And so here I was lost my job, lost my best friend, lost an uncle who was near and dear to me postpartum, and I was really, really bad. I mean, it was very rough and I had to find a way to like sort of scoop myself off the floor every day and still be a mother to my children, because I had three, I have three, and my daughter's birthday was coming, coming up and I know this is a story that I hear a lot when it comes to bakers like it all starts with a birthday cake. It all starts with a child's birthday cake, and it's no different with me.
Speaker 3:It was a child's birthday cake and I had, like I said, no experience in baking, with the exception of the proximity to pastry kitchens from my work previously and I just decided that I was going to make my daughter the cake that she wanted. She said she wanted a mermaid cake and, in typical me fashion being super extra, being high, achieving, being the daughter of Caesar and Veronique you know I'm like I'm going to not just make any old cake, I'm going to be super extra about it. And you know I wanted it to be three tiered and I wanted all the bits and bobs and everything and I was, you know. You know, obviously we go to YouTube Academy and YouTube University and and and look all that stuff up. And it was in that sort of like mini project that I was in the kitchen fiddling around till like three hours of the morning figuring out how to dowel a cake, how to buttercream a cake, how to use the bench scraper, I mean all that stuff was. It occupied my brain so much that for the first time, I was lifted out of the place of darkness that I was in.
Speaker 3:You know, and they say you know, this is something that brain surgeons study, when those neurons are developing new connections and when art is happening in our souls. Right, there's all this. What do you call it Synergies happening in those neurons that you start to change and you start to develop, and what makes us human is our need to create. And out of that sort of like darkness, with this strange connection to cake making, it was the weirdest thing ever but it was so zen.
Speaker 3:I mean just the fact of creating the cake mixture itself. When they say, you know to fold in the ingredients, don't mix it too quickly, that was so therapeutic, so, um, quieting of the mind and um. And I remember when, oh I remember when, um excuse my husband at my door, sorry. I remember when I was finished with the cake and I showed um, some of my friends they were were like you made that and I was like, yeah, and they're like you should make that for our friends or you should make that for my daughter. And that's when I started just taking on little commissions of birthday cake.
Speaker 3:And then I decided I think I'm going to make myself like a little business out of this. And then my husband was like what? That is so weird? He's like what, what brought you to this? I'm like, oh, it's a long story, it's a cake story yeah. Okay, I know, I know it was a long winded, but I had to no, no, no, we got it.
Speaker 2:We got it though.
Speaker 3:He was like what, what led to this? I'm like what, what led to this? I'm like it's a long story, oh, it's a cake story. And I was like, oh, and I just like just felt that moment, that connection, and then it was like everything just happened after that. It was very organic, it was very you know it. There was a lot of like serendipity about it. It just all really happened, so beautifully. And it did indeed save me. It pulled me out of that dark place. It really, really did.
Speaker 2:I know, and the thing is, with your story it could be anyone's cake story. It's a lot of our cake stories, you know it is it really?
Speaker 3:is our story. How many? Women do we need that? Find that connection of you know, and it is, it's just so beautiful. I mean, it is something that this is what, like my aunt and I mean this is what, like my people talk about, the connection that, you know, mexican aunties and moms have being in the kitchen making and cooking and preparing for the kids. And I get it, you know, I get it now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we absolutely, we absolutely do. And we not only get it, we understand how they survived, how they survived and thrived right Because of what the kitchen is doing for us and the artistry around cake and baking. I share a similar sentiment about cake, cake and baking and artistry has saved and changed my life really. It has really saved my children's life as well, because I found it at a time when I needed it the most. So I, like I said, like you know, your story could be ours, it is our story and we carry that. Yeah, we all have our own cake story.
Speaker 3:You said that so beautifully. It found you at a time when you needed it the most. Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, we didn't find it. It found us. I feel like we are chosen in these spaces and the choice for us was to live or to die. And here I'm giving you that gift of life to bake through whatever you're going through in those moments. So yeah, it found me for sure. So your designs come from such a rich and deep place. Olivia, you're really passionate about your cakes and your work, right? Where do you get your inspiration? Like you once said that cake design inspiration comes from the life around you.
Speaker 3:What's the journey from inspiration to execution for you? That's a good question. So it's funny because my family background, everyone in my family is an artist. Every single one of us is in some form of creative space, and that's how they not only make their money, but that's how they sustain themselves. We are just a bunch of extremely creative and artistic people painters, musicians, performing arts, builders, artisans and my cousin, actually, who is into performing arts. He sent me a DM just recently, because you know we all follow each other on Instagram and he sent me a DM on Instagram and he said Cousin, I love your work. It has such order, sobriety and elegance and you know that is so my cousin's amazement. He's just so. You know he's so well spoken, the actor in him, but you know he loves words, he loves language.
Speaker 3:I was like, oh my God, I've never thought about that before. But thank you so much because I agree with you that a cake story. My work is order and sobriety and elegance. I really love those descriptions. And then, when I got to thinking about it, I'm like, okay, where does this come from? And it just makes so much sense to me because, growing up, the aesthetics of my life, the way my parents raised us, the way our household, was what what I was exposed to as a child was a combination of both my parents my father, who's a quiet man, but he's very order-oriented, very cleanly oriented.
Speaker 3:Both my parents are extremely hyper focused on cleanliness. I mean, sometimes my father would point to something on the floor and it would be like a little fuzzy something, and then we just knew to pick it up, like he didn't have to say anything. And my mother was always cleaning. The house was always clean. There was always incredible amounts of order and anything that we were told how to do, but in a very loving way. So, from how we presented ourselves on weekend mornings to come downstairs like you didn't just come roll out of bed, all you know, you had to come downstairs ready for the day.
Speaker 3:Clothes had to be ready but always in a very loving way, even when we did our homework, when my father would help us he would say, very nicely, don't wrinkle up your papers. You know that kind of stuff and my mother always with her sort of exotic elegance and respect for for things and being beautiful and clean and nice, that really, really that was my life growing up, just continuously, and I really see how that translates into my art. I find incredible amounts of peace and like I, like we talked about the healing part I just translated that into my art.
Speaker 3:I want people to look at my work to feel that sense of serenity and peace and appreciation for the simplicity of it, but yet the beauty of it, the movements, the nakedness of it, but in a very unornate kind of way, not loud but quiet. Yeah, that sort of quietness I really, and that is that's every. That's where my child is, that's my parents, that's a quietness, I really, and that is that's every.
Speaker 2:That's where my child is, that's my parents. That's a hundred percent, Because it definitely show in the minimalism of how you know, of the cakes, but it's not simple. No no, it's not simple, it's not simple.
Speaker 3:It's not simple at all. There is such an incredible vulnerability in minimalism. And you have to really, really understand that and really I, really I'm so glad that you guys got to experience that, because a lot of times I hear sometimes where you're like, oh, you just did that. I'm like, oh, but did I, did I? It wasn't just done.
Speaker 2:It was not just done, yeah, and I'm happy that we got to experience that that minimalism is definitely not simple and there is truly an elegance to the work and our listeners should go check out Olivia's work. It's at a cake story on Instagram. I once read that you thought that combination of what you have learned through courses plus hours of trial and error and mastering your own medium right that your style comes from that. Can you elaborate for our listeners how, having creative control over your style and techniques and influence the ACS method?
Speaker 3:Right. So when I started in my cake journey, moving past the children's cakes, I realized very quickly, as a matter of fact, just from my daughter's mermaid cake, I noticed very quickly that fondant was a medium that I loved. Um, mermaid cake, I noticed very quickly that fondant was a medium that I loved and for the first minute I had in my hand fondant. Sugar paste was something that I loved, but I really didn't understand it, especially when it comes to the cake part. That was the very frustrating part for me. And in whenever I don't understand something and I want to understand it, I always deep dive into it at the molecular level, like I have to understand, like, what are the ingredients, why is it doing this, how can I do that? And so a lot of my courses and my education courses were focused on two things. Number one, understanding the baking part, so the whole, the scientific part of that. What does baking soda do? I mean I was literally googling difference between baking soda and baking powder, like really understanding the cake part.
Speaker 3:And then, simultaneously, I also took courses in in techniques and in particular was with. I'm not sure if you're familiar with him. I don't know his, I only know the name of his. It's called Yenner's Way, with a Y Yenner, I think. He's based in Australia, I'm not sure, but he does very complex 3D cakes like pirate ships and swans and all that kind of stuff. But I took his course because he actually explains how to do things technique wise and structurally and that really I cannot stress enough how important what an influence that Yenor's way had on my work not stylistically, not stylistically at all, just understanding how to work with the medium. And he works with chocolate.
Speaker 3:he works with sugar pastes and it was a combination of understanding cake and then understanding medium and then being able to sort of merge those together and realize that I can make the sugar paste do what I want, in my mind's eye, to do, based off of the skills that I learned by these professionals who actually can explain how that works, what its limitations are, what it can do, what it cannot do. And that is how my design aesthetic developed. It was because me understanding what the limitations are of sugar paste and what it can do, yeah, and then really molding and shaping from there you probably remember from the Arzuric class, there's a lot of molding and shaping and coping and patience and understanding sweet spots and all that kind of stuff. And that's really where it comes from is just understanding what makes it what it is and how can I make it do what I want it to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, what I took away and I learned from the Zurich class the most, olivia, is how much you invest in this art, how much of you you put into this artistry and your, your brand and your, your personal style of making cakes. I sat back and I watched you and I appreciated that. I can appreciate that about you. You, you put so much of your soul into into this work, so much so you even named one of your cakes the Soul, and I know that you know intellectual property and ownership of this, your soul, right. Your work is really important to you and I would like to know from you you know, talk about, tell us a little bit more where that came from and how much, how important is intellectual property to you?
Speaker 3:Oh, you know. So I, where that all comes from is, I mean, I'm just by nature and I think you're the same way too. I mean, I am extra, I'm super intense. When I want to learn something, you know, I'm all in, I'm a hundred percent. Again, this is reflecting back on my upbringing of my parents. It was always me. How do whatever it is that you want to do, but as long as you do it really good. You know that kind of stuff very like just you know, and and that definitely is reflective in my work Um, and that you know so much so that I created a cake design. I named it the soul because it literally it was something that had come. It was. It was again stemming from a very dark place that I was in the beginning of 2022. It was a rough patch for me and I had created this design that was really based off of sort of that feeling of sorrow and pain.
Speaker 1:And that's why I named.
Speaker 3:It Signed the Soul, sorrow and pain, and that's why I named that sign the soul, um. The soul has then since been replicated over and over, and over and over and over and, over and over again throughout the world, very popular in Australia, um, and you know, I get tagged on Instagram and I, yeah, I open up my Instagram and not a day goes by that someone hasn't recreated, added her own elements, and is inspired by it and I have to be very honest with you.
Speaker 3:At first I was totally um side what's the word um? Sort of like thrown off by that. I was like what just happened? Like how, like how is that possible? What, what's going on? And I'm now used to it now and and while I to me, I appreciate it very much that people do that, that they see it, they recreate it, they tag me, it's, it's obviously I don't have the right to tell people that they can't do that. That's not how art works. That's never how art works, you know if you go throughout art history.
Speaker 3:They're always taking from each other and building up on that, and that's perfectly fine. Um, I appreciate it the most when people do give credit where credit is due. I think that's very important, yeah, but, um, the question of if it's, if it's important to me, it's just. It's just something I guess we have to deal with as artists, right? So if you put your work out there, it's out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but then in your opinion, right, how do you think, how beneficial do you think crediting one's work is in baking or any related industry, Because, like, we come from a world of writing papers lots of papers, right and we have to give credit or we have to reference everyone who we mention in our papers. How beneficial do you think this is then? Intellectual property and recognizing someone's work, how beneficial is it in our industry?
Speaker 3:or probably in recognizing someone's work. How beneficial is it in our industry, right? Well, I mean I take, like you, coming from academia, I take a hard approach onto that, because you could never write a paper in university without properly citing your sources. I mean that would get you put you on academic probation faster than you could. Count right, your work, everything, your entire academic reputation would be on the line if you cited someone's work or even took a slight of a sentence and you didn't add that into your credit.
Speaker 3:So I think that's very important, that's extremely important, and that's not only something that we should all be doing. It's a sign of respect, it's proper behavior. But it doesn't happen in the cake art world. It's not regulated the way it is in academia or in other art forms. In music, you could get sued for using a melody. We can't do that in in k-guard. We absolutely there's, there's, no, there's no legal body that legislates any of that. So to really rely on, on everyone sort of behaving in the golden rule right, treat others how you want to be treated, respect the process, and that doesn't work every time I I see that it doesn't work every time and um, the the key is having to learn how to live with that and I don't know how.
Speaker 3:I don't know because there's sometimes where it bothers the heck out of me and I, like you know, because I do there. I see, you know, there are some really huge artists with huge followings on instagram. Um, I mean, I'm talking, I'm talking millions of followers on. Instagram cake artists that has copied artwork of mine one-to-one and what am I going to DM her? Yeah, you know, it's like. Well, there it is Gone. Oh well, what am?
Speaker 2:I going to do about it. You know I like, how, like, like everything you do, you do so passionately. You advocate for yourself passionately. You, you know you bake your cakes and decorate them and design them with so much passion and there's a little.
Speaker 3:Don't say that, I don't know. Am I though? Yeah, yeah, oh, my god, no, I mean listen, listen, no, wait, hold on now, because now you're starting no, now I'm gonna start getting some. No, no, so, no, so I don't, I don't know. Listen, this comes from my. Okay, so this is I just really believe that we need to minimize our impact on the planet as best possible fervent or I mean I eat meat. Um, you know like they. Just you know there's limits. But and of course, in the cake having a business in the wedding industry.
Speaker 3:Right, because a cake story is only wedding cakes. Um, weddings are not the most sustainable practices that we have. Um cake making in itself. When you are doing that as a business, you know we use single use plastics in terms of piping bags, you can't. I mean there's work around that, but in general we we use plastics and all that kind of stuff. So staunch, yeah, I mean I just do my best. Where I apply my, my strictness is yeah in two places, that is, with my sourcing of ingredients.
Speaker 3:So I try to make sure that they're local, that they're sustainable. So you know that kind of stuff um, especially when it comes to sourcing ingredients that are close to home, that I can access milk from happy cows that make happy butter, happy chickens that make happy eggs.
Speaker 3:That is very easily accessible here in Switzerland, thank goodness, so that works very well, um, but when it comes to my design tools that I've created I created a collection of design tools um, when I ventured into that product uh section of product development it was very important to me to use sustainable materials, so not single plastics, um, not using microplastics. That will end back in the end back and back in the ocean. But that was harder than I had ever thought possible and it is really difficult when you are a small business and you go into product development. This could be a perfect case study. I'm telling you if I was back at school I would write a thesis about this how, as small business owners, we are so limited to our access to sustainable materials because our margins are much smaller, our volume is much smaller, and the big companies can go order millions of pieces of something, some gadget and get the green materials.
Speaker 3:But the small business owners, we can't do that because we don't have the the numbers, and so we're left with having to choose from ordering things from far away countries with questionable human rights. I don't want any children building my tools or anything like that, so I had to make sure that it was local, and I did that. I created a cake story shop, I created tools, I created cake relief and cake tiles, all inspired from the construction industry. So cake tiles and cake reliefs have that sort of influence on them, and they were made using sustainable materials here in Switzerland and Germany. But yeah, that was very difficult and I don't think I would do it again.
Speaker 2:Well, I just love your approach to being so intentional about using environmentally friendly like raw materials in your products. You know, not really compromising on like your expense and doing cheaper or quicker. And I think that falls in line with one of your quote where you said society must stop leveraging durability against sustainability and the future of our planet, and I wholeheartedly agree with you on that.
Speaker 3:Are you the only one that read my website? I love you for that. I mean, honestly, I'm going to cry right now. Finally, someone has read. I felt like I was just speaking out into the ether when I wrote that.
Speaker 2:Thank you, exactly, yeah exactly, I love your intentionality. I really do love your intentionality around your work. I mean, it's highly commendable, to be completely honest.
Speaker 2:Thank you, you know I you also said on your website that you believe wholeheartedly that proximity to the art is cleansing for the soul it is it is so incredibly cleansing for the soul and you referenced, like in your flower making as well, right, that making flowers is also a therapeutic and a cleansing aspect for you and I want to know and for our listeners, cause I lead the Cake Therapy Foundation. It's a space designed for women and girls to learn how to bake and to use baking and cake artistry as healing for their soul and their trauma, and I would like to hear from you and to share with them how has being a cake artist personally affected your life and how you cope with the other aspects of your life? You know, as you're going through your day-to-day.
Speaker 3:I mean it has changed everything for me.
Speaker 3:Despite having such incredible parents and a beautiful childhood per se, there comes so much sadness, so much trauma.
Speaker 3:My two older brothers were killed when they were teenagers I was 11 at the time when it happened and it profoundly shifted our family and changed everything and the ability to find healing through creating, through artistry, through finding quiet spaces.
Speaker 3:To take something as simple as sugar paste and mold it into nature's beautiful petals. The quiet moment in that is what not only the brain needs but the soul needs, and being able to do that a person is able to find so much healing in that, and there's a reason why some of the saddest stories are from artists who suffer tremendously in their lives. And they find the brush to the canvas, they find the hands to the chisel and the hammer. That's what leads those two worlds together, and so being able to create art when you are in a place of complete darkness is the most healing thing that we as humans do. It's what differentiates us from other living beings is the ability to find that sort of feeling. So, before reaching for any other self-medicating method, I always tell people find a way to express yourself creatively and artistically. The healing that you will find in that is so profound, so deep that it's unrivaled Unrivaled.
Speaker 2:Man, such a powerful message to our listeners. Right, you are a successful entrepreneur in your own right. You beg from a place of pain and passion. Speak to the girl again who's listening, who wants to become a cake artist. I want you to tell her about entrepreneurship, but I also want you to speak to the girl who is in pain and is seeking an outlet. How profound and how beneficial can this journey indicate be for her.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow, that's intense. That's intense. In each and every one of us there is a calling and a drive to create, and the key is listening to that and to never tell yourself that you can't do it. To never tell yourself that you don't have the education for it or that you don't know how to do something, or I never learned how to do that, that you don't know how to do something or I never learned how to do that.
Speaker 3:If the calling within you is to create something, just go and do it, just pick up whatever it is that calls to you and do it, and never mind whether or not you have the qualifications for it, never mind if you have the proper training or the titles or the laurels. Creativity doesn't require all those things. It just requires you to just let it happen and never question yourself about it. And that is really the beauty of being an artist is that you don't have to adhere to the constraints, you just let it happen. I think I would tell little Olivia that you will find what you're looking for through your art, through your creativity.
Speaker 2:Yep, you can find what you're looking for through your art and your creativity. This is a great place to say thank you to Olivia for those kind words and before we go or wrap up, I'd like to know from Olivia, like one final fun question.
Speaker 3:Yeah, make it fun, because I'm getting bad.
Speaker 2:I'm like okay, let's take it. Oh, um, I just want, like I'm curious, like what's in the pipeline for you know, for a cake story? What, what, what should we expect you? Yeah, 2023, well, I mean I, you know.
Speaker 3:You know because you were privy to some things, but you're not telling anyone. So I do have something working in the pipeline that I really hope will manifest itself in 2024. Aside from that, just continue on creating my beautiful work with the beautiful team and friends that I have around me that I work with in the wedding industry. Like I said, I focus mainly on wedding cakes and I just wish to continue the beautiful collaboration that we have now to create more beautiful works of art. In terms of my academy, I'm collaborating right now with different artists to introduce them or not to introduce them because they've already been introduced, but just to come to Zurich and to teach at my academy and just spread the word of creativity and art and passion and just doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, there's a lot coming, but I I know this has been like wonderful to catch up with you, olivia. Um, you can find Olivia at a cake story on Instagram. Could you share with our listeners your website, olivia?
Speaker 3:Sure, so my website is wwwacake. Well, let me just double check. I'm sorry, I just want to double check. Oh yeah, so it's the letter A, and then hyphen cake storycom. Yeah, so hyphen, or for some people, I think they also call it minus sign. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's hyphen. Yeah, it's hyphen. Yeah. So it's wwwa-cake-storycom. We want to thank Ms Olivia Sirledi for joining us. This was such a breathtaking one hour of conversation with her. This was such a beautiful one hour of conversation with her. This was such a beautiful slice of joy and healing and, as usual, I am Altricia, your host. Thank you for joining us on the Cake Therapy Podcast your slice of joy and healing, thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
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. Thank you.