Vendor Feature: Gateaux Inc.
Meet Robin Martin, cake boss and owner of the infamous Gateaux, Inc. Robin specializes in designing beautiful and customized cakes and desserts for weddings and special events. Style-Architects is completely head-over-heels for Gateaux, Inc., and apparently, so are the celebrities! Whether she’s creating Betty White’s 90th birthday cake {delivered, no less, by Robin on the General Mills Corporate Jet} or Justin Morneau’s wedding cake, Robin steps outside the box and delivers stunning results. Lovely Robin’s cakes have been featured nationally in Bride’s Magazine, People, InStyle, and Grace Ormonde Wedding Style. Is there anything this woman can’t do or create? Go ahead, we dare you to challenge her!
How did Gateaux Inc. get its start?
I was working as a photographer when I decided to start making wedding cakes. I was newly married, and wanted to find a job that didn’t require me to work evenings and weekends so I could actually see my husband from time to time. I opened Gateaux Inc. and haven’t seen him since.
I gave notice at the photo studio, and bought a cake decorating book (Colette’s Wedding Cakes). Six months later, having never made a cake that wasn’t frosted Styrofoam, I did my first wedding fair and booked 40 wedding cakes.
What sets Gateaux Inc. apart from other wedding cake specialists?
We’re not your typical bakery. We specialize in wedding and event cakes. Each cake is designed to its specific event, and we rarely repeat a design. Most bakeries and cake shops prefer to focus on a number of simpler designs that they can execute quickly and efficiently. I bore easily and want each cake to be a new challenge.
We limit the number of events that we’ll take each week to three so that our entire staff can spend a full day decorating a single cake. This allows us to spend the time necessary to make each cake one of a kind and often ridiculously detailed.
With that type of decorating schedule, we don’t have to mass produce any cakes. This allows us to bake everything fresh. We don’t even have a commercial freezer in the shop. Fresh baked cakes make all the difference. They are always moist and delicious.
What other services does Gateaux offer besides beautiful and customized cakes?
We’ve always made wedding cakes and edible favours. Our favours range from handmade truffles and petit fours to elaborately decorated sugar cookies.
We’ve offered dessert displays for years, but have just recently added Gourmet Popcorn Buffets (served out of silver champagne buckets) and S’mores tables.
About thirteen years ago, we began doing custom wedding invitations and stationery. It started as a way to keep busy during the slower winter season, but has become another vehicle for us to customize our clients’ event from start to finish. We work with letterpress companies that will allow us to provide the art for our clients, so that we can create completely unique invitations for each couple. If that means hand-making hundreds of ribbon rosettes, so be it!
Every Gateaux design has a unique expression of the particular client or event, similar to a brand. How do you ensure that no two designs are alike?
That’s simple. No two weddings are alike! If the couple allows their own tastes and personality to shine through, their wedding will be like no other. I often sit across from clients who claim to have no theme to their wedding. That’s good! Theme weddings have a high potential to be overdone and cheesy. What these couples often have is a design scheme. Whether it be as pronounced as a Beatles design scheme, or as subtle as a simple collection of the things that the couple loves, each wedding develops its own look. Cake ideas can come from the least likely of sources. I’m constantly saving things online that intrigue me, from home décor patterns, to ethnic pottery, and graphic design.
Tempt us with your flavors! What is your favorite cake flavor? Do you create custom flavors?
My personal favorite is listed on our menu as our Cream Cheese Nirvana. It is my favorite wedding cake flavor for any season. It is lemon cake with cream cheese filling and fresh raspberries, and it is delicious. My true favorite, is more of a seasonal flavor, but I could eat it year round. It is our Pumpkin Walnut cake with cream cheese filling. It is love on a plate.
We customize our flavors just like we customize the look of our cakes. I recently had a groom that didn’t like sweets at all. When I asked him what he did like, he answered “Jack Daniels”. So, we made them a “Whiskey Sour” cake. The cake was flavored with lemon zest and Limoncello, and we made a Whiskey infused mousse filling. Layered the Mousse with lemon curd, and it came out as a velvety-smooth sophisticated flavor.
What are your current favorites from among your cakes?
That’s kind of like asking a mother to choose her favorite child. They all have their charms as well as their problems. You always love them, but some days you don’t like them all too much. My current favorite is a graphic wedding cake that we copied from the bride’s beautiful wedding invitations.
The best engineering feat would be the 80th birthday giant sundae cake or our Taj Mahal cake, complete with light-up minarets.