Bronwen Wyatt originally came to New Orleans to attend Tulane University. Following Hurricane Katrina, she entered the restaurant industry as a prep cook at her brother’s restaurant in Maine. After working in San Francisco, she returned to New Orleans to be the pastry chef at La Petite Grocery and later worked at Shaya, Willa Jean, Bacchanal and Elysian Bar. During the pandemic, she launched her cake business, Bayou Saint Cake, which specializes in flower-decorated layer cakes and offers king cakes during Carnival. Last week, she moved her business into the Southern Food & Beverage Museum, where she’ll collaborate with other chefs, teach classes and more. Find information about her bakery at bayousaintcake.minimartapp.com or on Instagram, @bayousaintcake.
Gambit: How did you start Bayou Saint Cake?
Bronwen Wyatt: Early in the pandemic at Elysian Bar, we were doing take-home dinners. Everyone was trying to figure out some way to pivot and still make money. For those dinners, I was doing whole take-home cakes as a family-style dessert option.
I still have a wonderful relationship with (Bacchanal and Elysian Bar), but I did get furloughed. At that point, I randomly started making cakes and selling them through Instagram, and it took off from there. People reached out to ask if they could still get cakes.
The ones I was doing at that point were single layer cakes with a garnish. It would be like single layer devil’s food cake with a ganache and caramel on top. Bacchanal has a really incredible garden. The gardener was giving me flowers to decorate with. That’s how that got started.
I get flowers from all over. I still work with the Bacchanal gardener, because she has an incredible home garden. Her name is Jo LaRocca. I also get flowers from Molly Fay Flower Farm, Baby T-Rex Farms and Nightshade Farm and Flowers. Those are all local growers. They’re all organic, unsprayed, so I get my edible flowers from them.
Gambit: What types of cake do you make?
Wyatt: I try to use the highest quality ingredients I can where it matters most. For any cake that has an olive oil in it, I use Texas Olive Oil Ranch — that’s a regional company. I use Valrhona Chocolate. I use 98% local produce.
The menu is driven seasonally. For a recent wedding cake, I did Meyer lemon curd with candied kumquats and a vanilla bean buttercream. I’ll do a Valrhona chocolate cake with chocolate tahini mousse and maple buttercream. The menu changes quite a bit. There is always an option like a dealer’s choice, which is whatever cake I feel like making that week based on …….
Source: https://www.nola.com/gambit/food_drink/article_a4d01d36-6f1b-11ec-945e-8f5375ec3485.html
