Page 8 - Cornwall Issue 6 2022

LIFESTYLE

had completed their studies and Chantelle had started
working on movies and planning a relocation to
the UK to work there. The friendship culminated in NICOLE'S
Robin flying up to Gauteng, surprising Chantelle over
sundowners on the Cornwall koppie, and proposing.
The whole family got to share in the magical surprise BAKING
proposal.
For this sentimental couple, it seemed fitting that, JOURNEY
when planning their Cape wine lands wedding,
Chantelle and Robin should ask a Cornwall cake After completing her schooling, Nicole travelled to
decorator and family friend to make their cake. Thus Germany and Switzerland and “got a taste for fine cuisine
it was that late in September I packed a cake in many and pastries.” She then began an in-service chef’s training
parts into insulated cake boxes and drove down to with the Protea Hotel Group and completed her training
Stellenbosch. An experience not for the faint-hearted, at the Wits Hotel School, before going on to work in the
I can assure you. commercial catering industry. She says that the pastry
kitchen always appealed to her and even after leaving
I translated the vision Chantelle and Robin had for formal employment, she continued to bake for home
an ethereal forest wedding into a three-tier cake, consumption, making celebration cakes and desserts for
each tier made of a different chocolate: milk, white family and friends. Now that her children are independent,
and dark, and decorated with chocolate bark, lush she has begun baking on a larger scale, expanding to
posies of sugar roses and peonies, sugar foliage and creating celebration cakes on order. All her new clients
the whole thing topped with a handmade pair of have been through word of mouth, and she says she feels
foxes representing the bridal couple. The cake was very fortunate to be busy all the time.
displayed on a rustic wine barrel at the venue and
fitted perfectly into the setting. Judging by the broad “I prefer to create bespoke cakes that are designed
smiles when the time came to cut their cake, it fitted specifically for my clients, and not copy other cake artists’
the vision of Chantelle and Robin perfectly too. designs. This means that I need a few days lead time for my
cakes, depending on the complexity of the design.”
It may be clichéd to say it, and perhaps many cake
decorators feel the same, but none the less it was a
privilege for me to be able to make a cake for this Nicole Zerwick e-mail: zerwick.nicole@gmail.com
beautiful couple, now officially Mr and Mrs Shelton, Cell: 0834411582
on their special day and to be part of the beginning of Instagram: cakesbyniczee
their ‘happy ever after.’

6 Cornwall View • Issue 6 2022