“I was fond of my Easy-Bake Oven as a child,” admits Rachel Willis. So it’s not a big leap to learn that she grew up to become founder, owner, and chief baker of Cakes by Rachel.
But there did have to be a little more preparation along the way. Willis went from college to the New England Culinary Institute, and then spent several years cooking in France. A New Jersey native whose mother was from Charlottesville, Willis loved this area and moved here in the early 1990s. Over the next 15 years, she worked at Metropolitain, owned by chefs Vincent Derquenne and Tim Burgess; became opening chef at Continental Divide, which still serves her Red Hot Blues, Santa Fe Enchilada, and tuna tostada; at The Clifton as sous chef and then executive chef; and at L’Avventura next to Vinegar Hill Theatre.
The next big change came in 2007, when Willis and her husband had their first child. “I thought I would do some small-scale catering from home—that would offer more flexibility [while my son was young],” Willis says. “A friend asked me to make her wedding cake and I thought, ‘Okay, I can do that.’ And then someone else asked …” And Cakes by Rachel was born.
Willis ran the baking from her Crozet home until 2015, when she purchased a cottage nearby to house the growing business. She also added help: Laura Grice, a UVA studio arts graduate with a sweet tooth and creative bent, came on board in 2018, and Laurel Fortier, a Hokie and home baker who keeps the office running and the clients delighted, a few years later.
“We do make other things, but wedding cakes are the core of our business,” says Willis. Handling weddings takes “a specific structure as a business, and requires booking very far out. But we will do jobs for special occasions, and have offered a selection of sweets for Valentine’s Day for the last 10 years.”
In the early years, Willis notes, there was a transition from being a chef to being a baker. “Baking uses a different part of your brain. Cooking is a lot about being in the moment, flexing with the ingredients—you can add and change as you go along. Baking takes more mental discipline—it’s more precise. Everything has to be part of the plan from the get-go.” Being a pastry chef has changed her style as well: “Baking asks you to slow down—that’s what it has taught me.”
While making a cake requires patience, baking for weddings is an organizational and performance challenge, Willis has learned, because the occasion is so important to the couple. “It is sort of an extreme sport. My motto is, there is no ‘almost’ in wedding cakes.”
But Willis loves the creative side, which starts with getting to know her clients: their tastes, their style, their backgrounds, their expectations. “We love to personalize,” she says. “Basically, we’re a customer service business, and you get a cake at the end!”
The cake itself starts with the ingredients. Cakes by Rachel tries to buy local, and will purchase all the supplies for your order at once (this is not the time to be one egg short). “The flavors are usually pretty simple,” she says, “because you’re serving it to so many people.” Special options include vegan, gluten-free, and dairy-free; sometimes she will handle special needs by making cupcakes or small cakes for specific guests. Cakes by Rachel’s specialty is filled cakes, using a range of local fruits as compotes freshly made for each cake.
Beyond that, “there are few things trendier than wedding cakes,” Willis says with a laugh. While the tall tiered cake is “an iconic convention,” styles do come and go. Sugar flowers are popular now, whether made of buttercream or gum paste or actual fresh flowers. Another popular style is “cakes that look like something your grandmother would have had at her wedding”—decoratively iced with bows and scrolls. The latest trend is millefoglie, an Italian dessert made with vanilla custard and fresh fruit between layers of puff pastry—large, round and flat, unlike the tiered tower.
Cakes by Rachel also does a number of groom’s cakes, whether for the rehearsal dinner or the wedding itself—and for groom’s cakes tradition goes out the window. Once she created a replica of the world’s largest pistachio statue (it’s in Alamogordo, New Mexico—Google it!). A cake like a steak, a cake like a mountain, a cake like a burger and fries, a cake like a beaver, a cake like a Scrabble board—if you can eat it, they will bake it.
“I’m very grateful to be able to spend every day creating,” says Willis. Whether it’s three tiers decorated with macarons or a smiling giraffe, you can only wonder what’s next.
