Cake Design: cake architect Romana Gardani (part I)

2016-12-30 Romana Gardani is a cake architect. She has built medieval towers as high as the one in which Rapunzel was imprisoned in the famous fairy tale set down by the Brothers Grimm. She has been in charge town planning for an entire village of gnomes. And she has created the pleasant landscapes of Watership Down.
And to think that until about fifteen years ago, only two desserts were served in her house: apple pie and trifle. That was it. Then one day her daughter Camilla, who as 10 at the time, said: Mummy, you’ve never made a cake shaped like a castle.
“I love challenges”, Romana confesses, “and so I started reading up on it. It wasn’t easy, because no-one knew anything about Cake Design in Italy at the time. Nobody even knew where I could buy glucose syrup to make the sugar paste. But I worked hard: I learned how to make sugar paste and work with the icing, and then I continued to get better and better at it, learning from my errors.”
A former mathematics teacher, methodical and precise, Romana is also a creative spirit. “I’ve always had an inclination for art and design. When I was a little girl I wanted to be an architect: I used to draw houses in cross section, in layout view, in perspective”. And luckily she has found a thousand ways of making up for the fact she never became a descendent of Vitruvius!
In 2010 Gardani published a volume published in Italian, Spanish and English, Sensational Party Cakes: Fun and Fancy Cake Decorating Ideas by Romana Gardani, the second book on the subject of Cake Design to be published in Italy. In 2011 it was followed by a book on Cookie Design, Biscotti creativi. Facili da fare, belli da regalare, co-authored with Cristina Bottari and published in Italian.
Riding on the wave of her new-found fame, the cake architect appeared on a very popular cooking show on Italy’s number one national television channel and became one of the first to hold Cake Design courses, attracting pupils from all over the country.
“When I’m asked to make a cake, I try not to settle for the first idea that comes into my head, because it’s usually the most obvious. And I try never to make the same cake twice… Reading about the theme of the cake is a very important stage. I once read up on microbes and made them in all shapes and sizes for a cake for a biology graduate….”
Once she comes up with the right idea, planning is an essential stage: Romana starts to visualise the cake in her mind, seeing what it will look like, how big it will be, and what colours. “I sketch a general idea on a piece of paper, then I refine it with more sketches, down to the tiniest detail. Then I think about how to build the cake, seeking to solve the problems of staticity: with time I have learned a lot of decorating techniques that make not only an aesthetic but a structural contribution. And finally, I carefully calculate how long it will take me to make the cake.”

Mariagrazia Villa