A Piece of Cake

Owner and Instructor Lika Zowmi of Ice A Cake Institute

The air was filled with the aroma of vanilla icing on a Sunday morning. A group of 10 students with their aprons tied, sleeves rolled, piping bags and plastic containers filled with colourful pre-made icing, were gathered together around the table to learn how to make flowers using royal icing.

Lika Zowmi is a chief instructor and founder of Ice A Cake Institute. At the age of 15, Lika Zowmi started decorating cakes as a hobby. At 23, she joined Wilton - a baking supply company and baking institute – to become an instructor.

Ice A Cake is located in a small studio in a plaza near Brimley Road and Sheppard Avenue. Zowni teaches her students how to pipe a violet, poinsettia, lily and a pansy flower. Zowmi makes it look easy but when it came down to piping – squeezing a pastry bag to force icing through the tip - a violet flower petal; it is difficult to get it right on the first try. Many of the students were determined to get the pressure and hand positions right to get a perfect petal.

“Icing is ready made so you don’t need to worry about (getting it wrong). You can scrap it off. It’s not that easy but it’s fun,” Zowmi said.

Baking is Marija Finney’s hobby. She is planning on throwing a surprise bridal shower for her daughter when she arrives from Australia in December. Finney decided to do a two-tiered cake with a cascading bouquet of pansies. Zowmi suggested that she could change the colours of the cake inside to match the pansies.

“I’m just a hobbyist. I do birthday cakes for my kids at home. I love the creative aspect of it. It’s very relaxing,” Finney said. “I am trying to master this. It’s my daughter’s favourite flower. I wanted to put pansies on the cake for her. This is one that I’m going to be practising a lot.”

Zowmi gave her students 15 minutes to practice piping each flower. Next up, she teaches that in order to create a poinsettia, the piping bag must be at a 45-degree angle and should have the perfect amount of pressure. Then, release the pressure midway through to create a petal-like shape. There are different types of piping nozzles needed to achieve these flower decorations but a simple hack is using a plastic bag instead of a piping bag and filling it with icing. Zowmi recommends gently tapping corn starch on top of a piped flower to help the drying process. If your icing is stiff, adding water can loosen it.

“You need to know the angles for this because you will be in trouble if you don’t,” Zowmi said.

Photo By: Vinuthini Vinothan

A graduate of Ice A Cake and co-creator of Artisan’s Affair, Vinuthini Vinothan, specializing in cake In the greater Toronto area, says her career was a surprise to her and her business partner and sister-in-law.

“We didn’t know this was going to happen when we were planning my sister-in-law’s 40th birthday,” Vinothan said.

Vinothan always had a passion for baking, it wasn’t until the birthday goodies were baked that she realized it could be a career. Her sister in law and her decided to start an event planning business. It wasn’t until clients started requesting cake orders that Vinothan then decided to bake and that was when Artisan’s Affair was born.

“DIY baking takes a lot of effort though because you have to be able to live off of YouTube. So, you’re having to go back through YouTube videos,” Vinothan continues. “Also, having to go through social media to see what other people are doing, how to bake it and make stuff. There’s a lot of reading and researching you have to do.”

Vinothan started taking classes at Ice A Cake to increase her knowledge of cake decorating and baking. She started getting ideas and suggestions from other students for her cakes.

“You also have to take classes like this to learn what to do. There are other students who were in the baking business. So, they gave a lot of tips and advice,” she said.

Vinothan agrees that you don’t necessarily need the fancy equipment bakers to use in order to start your own business.

“We still use household appliances. We still do it in our own kitchen at home,” Vinothan said.

Finney took an introductory to cake decorating workshop with Zowmi, before moving on to a more advanced class.

“My husband got this class as a gift for me,” Finney says. “Doing cakes is my thing in the family.”