Sweet Magazine 2013 - A Sweet Year Volume One, 2013 | Page 50

There’s no doubt about it, Karen
Portaleo oozes creativity and
talent! Her awe inspiring work is
another example of what an artist
can do when challenged with a
new medium. With a mix of quirky
imagination and pure talent, Karen

has created some of the most
popular cakes we’ve seen! In 2013
Karen started her own studio,
and we can’t wait to see what she
produces next!

I met with Karen on a beautiful Autumn day at the Whimsical

to their own careers in cake decorating. Now the lead

Cakehouse in Dolans Bay NSW where she was taking a

decorator at Atlanta’s Highland Bakery, Karen says she fell

quick break from a week packed with filming video tutorials

into cake decorating by accident. Meeting a friend at the

for Cake Masters. On arriving I stood in awe while the team

bakery one day she noticed the store was missing decorated

at Whimsical explained that Karen was planning the cake

baked goods and asked to decorate some cookies - the

that they were going to start filming that day - she’d been

catalyst for a change in medium from clay to sugar and a

given the go- ahead from Warner Bros ten minutes earlier,

turning point in Karen’s artistic career.

and at 1 o’clock in the afternoon, they planned to start
filming in two hours and wrap all filming that day. Later had
the pleasure of speaking with her friend Ria (Ria’s Blue
Bird - Atlanta) who spoke about Karen’s ability to talk with a
customer about a cake and just ‘know’ how to make it. This

Working with companies including Dove and Maybelliene
Karen designed and built sets for her high profile clients’
advertising campaigns, and attributes her set building
structural knowledge to her ability

completely explained the cool, calm and collected Karen

to create gravity defying sculpted 3D cakes. Karen’s artistic

that had been given about half an hour to plan, create and

career lead her from jewelry making and clay and so we

film a 3D Joker cake - a task that would turn most of us into a

asked Karen why she chose to make the change to sugar.

nervous wreck!

She explained that working in clay and partnering with

Karen Portaleo’s cakes are much more than sponge,

galleries was slow, drawn out

buttercream and fondant - they’re intricate and awe- inspiring

and unprofitable. For Karen, working with modelling

works of art that many call the inspiration that lead them

chocolate - her preferred medium - is almost the same as
working with clay, and when she started posting
pictures of her edible artwork online it took off and became

You’ve got to
practice.
Your own trial and
error is where
you’ll learn the
most.

more successful. At Cake! we talk to many different cake
decorators with all kinds of backgrounds, and unusually
when I asked if her background in art was the reason
her cakes were so popular, she said while it helped - no.
“Everyone makes and eats cake, but with art there is an
intimidation factor - people think they need to be educated to
have an opinion on art”. Food, says Karen, is so much more