“My interest in cake started after I got married and I realised how expensive my wedding cake was. It was a great cake, but it was very expensive and since then I said to myself that I will learn to do cakes and will do everybody’s wedding cake for free. I started to do it, but the cake decorators started to complain and I had to attach a fee to it,” Paula Blount revealed.
The Lindener says cake is now her life and it has been catapulted into something bigger than she could have imagined. Looking back at the beginning, she said that she completed her cake decorating course in July of 2000 and immediately went to work by providing free cake decorating services to persons, since that was the intention. But it soon turned into a business after she was forced to affix a charge for her services.
Paula, now 41 years old, owns and operates Healthy Bites Cakes located in Central Amelia’s Ward in Linden, Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice). She said that the bakery became a reality during the last six years after she decided to delve deeper into the world of cakes.
“I bake and offer cake decorating training. We bake and decorate cakes and sell them at affordable costs, and I always say that I can sell you a cake and I can teach you how to make a cake. For the last two years, I have been travelling countrywide and teaching the women how to do a cake. I taught about 85 per cent of the ladies that you see selling cakes now. I don’t teach them just to decorate, I teach them to start their businesses, because they need that skill to be more self-sufficient,” she said.
She notes that her cakes are unique because she puts her all into them and around the festive season, even more goes into making her cakes. She uses the finest quality ingredients to offer the best tasting cakes. Her black cakes are to die for. They are super moist and soaked in just the right amount of alcohol. She said that she did not venture into the world of cookies and pastries because they were readily available, but quality cakes were sometimes very hard to find.
Apart from the regular custom cakes, Paula, during Christmas time, offers her customers the choice of taking home either a delectable black cake, a scrumptious fruit cake or an irresistible sponge. Her cakes are a labour of love and in true Guyanese style, she serves them without any decoration. However, if her customers request decorations, then their wish would be fulfilled.
When I asked her what makes her cakes different from others, she responded: “My cakes are a part of me. They are not only flavourful, but I do not sell a customer a cake, because they want a cake; I talk to them and find out their likes and then I create a masterpiece for them. It is how I work and I guess it is what makes my cakes and myself truly different.”
(Sunday Times Magazine)
