CakesDecor Interviews #2 - Aldoska

Aldoska is a mother of 3 kids, lives with her husband and her two sons in a small village in Czech Republic, Europe. She is happily married and the family is always on the first place in her life. She works as a teacher in special class for children with mental disabilities. Get a coffee and enjoy the interview …

1. How did you first get started with cake decorating?
In our family my grandma and later my mum used to bake cakes on every occasion, but they have always focused more on the taste than on the cake look. Decorations were simple, usually just a buttercream border. When I got married, I’ve continued baking the same cakes for my family. Around 6 years ago my sister-in-law asked me to bake two wedding cakes for my niece´s wedding. I don’t know why she asked me, because all I ever baked were simple cakes that always looked like a bicycle wheel :). Fortunately, short time before someone sent me some photos of beautiful cakes and I had the courage (or was bold enough) to promise that I would do that. I wanted to do something similar as on the photos, so I searched for the cake decorating information and tutorials and without any previous experience I started to bake. Oddly enough, it was a success … all wedding guests liked the cakes very much. And this was the beginning.

2. Why did you decide to decorate cakes?
Actually, I didn’t decide to decorate cakes … As you know already, I was asked to make my first more difficult cake. I was not about to make cake decorating to be my hobby indeed, but you know that – it catches you and won’t let you go. Now I can’t even imagine my life without cakes. I’m either making them or at least talking about them :). It consumes much of my free time. Sometimes it happens that I bake cakes and decorate them in my dreams.

3. Are there any things you do differently now than when you first started decorating?
Definitely. My beginnings and the present can’t be compared. During the 6 years I’ve been decorating cakes, I’ve improved in procedures and learnt to use many new decorating tools and materials. When I was decorating my first cakes, I only used home-made materials and I didn’t have any tools, just my hands. It would be probably the same in the present, if there wouldn’t be an internet – I could find information needed for decorating cakes, learn decorating techniques following video tutorials, discuss my procedures with other cake decorators and buy lots of amazing tools in cake decorating e-shops.

4. What has been your greatest challenge?
My biggest problem is the time. I have very demanding job and I only bake cakes in my free time. Making a cake requires not only skills, patience, but also enough time. The work on a cake from preparation of dough to the final adjustments takes me around 10-25 hours depending on decoration difficulty. It’s exactly like Peggy said in the previous interview: we’re really special breed – to make cakes we can stay up until wee hours of the morning and then still manage to function during the day, as if we were sleeping well whole night long.

5. What is the most rewarding part of cake decorating?
I am always happy if I can use my own designs. Fine ornaments and flowers are my favorite ones. Drawing the layout on the paper is the part I like the most, because I’m visualizing the final look of a cake. And I always take delight in the final product, if it looks great. On the other hand, I don’t like to do cars and 3D machines and I really hate to do a cake as the exact copy from the photo.

6. What are your favorite cake decorating tools?
I felt in love with Sugar Artistry cutters. They have nice shapes, they are elegant and help me make beautiful decorations. However, I am almost in the same love with my two cupboards full of amazing and very necessary baking tools. :)

7. Which one of your cakes is your favorite?
It is difficult to answer this question. During the 6 years of baking and decorating cakes, I’ve made around 450 cakes. It’s not easy to choose the best one. However my most favorite are wedding cakes, but I can’t choose the most favorite one.

Aldoska’s Wedding Cakes:

8. Could you give some tips to people who have just started decorating cakes or would love to start?
First of all I would like to advice to not be discouraged by of potential failure. Nobody can learn everything right away, it’s important to be patient. Decorating matters have an incredible advantage – you can reuse it even If your decoration is failure, or the worst case you can eat it :). As I have already said at the beginning, you can learn a lot from cake decorating websites, me myself have gained most of my skills this way.

9. How did you find CakesDecor.com and what is it that keeps you coming back?
Peggy(Peggy Does Cake) invited me to CakesDecor, we know each other from the CakeCentral. I felt in love with CD immediately. Website is well organized, easy to navigate and I keep meeting very pleasant people here. I’m sorry that I don’t speak English very well and it’s difficult for me to overcome the language barrier. But I’m not giving up and I try to improve my language skills.

10. What’s been the biggest surprise in all of this for you?
The biggest surprise for me was to see the huge popularity of my Winter cake . It’s very pleasant, I appreciate it very much and I would like to thank all of you, who liked it.

11. Is there anything you would like to add?
Last but not least I would like to thank Michal for the existence of this website and for his approach – I really would not do without him helping me communicating in English, his witty replies and open-mindedness..

Thank you Alena for your time and answering our interview questions.

Check out Aldoska’s website: www.aldoska.estranky.cz

Here are some cakes made by Aldoska (To see all Aldoska’s Cakes, click here.):