LIV: Wedding talent takes the cake in Port Alberni bakeries

LIV: Wedding talent takes the cake in Port Alberni bakeries

Port Alberni couples looking for a wedding cake don't have to go far.

Port Alberni couples looking for a wedding cake don’t have to go far. There are several bakeries and home-based businesses in Alberni that offer custom made cakes for the special day.

Terrie Admiraal at Mountain View Bakery is the head cake decorator and says she can make anywhere from two to 20 wedding cakes a year.

“It gets pretty intricate. Usually [customers] call and I ask them to come down and show me a picture of what they’re looking for and then we talk over all the dimensions, how many people, the fillings and decorations and go from there,” Admiraal said. “It’s quite a long process to get to where they’re happy with the design they’re looking for.”

Admirall and her husband have 45 years of baking and decorating experience combined and both have their Red Seal.

Quality Foods also offers custom wedding cakes.

Head baker Suzanne Cochrane said the grocery store’s bakery will make “a few” wedding cakes each year.

“[Couples] can come in and if they have a certain idea that they want I can do that,” Cochrane said. “We also have a book with different types of cakes too.”

Port Alberni’s Brittany Prudhomme runs a home-based business—Brittany’s Edible Art—offering an array of baked goods including wedding cakes.

She said typically couples will send a picture of a cake they’d like to have that Prudhomme will replicate.

“Sometimes I get free reign,” Prudhomme said. “They just give maybe a theme, or colour, or general idea and I get to run with it. Probably my favourite way to do it.”

Baking started as a hobby for Prudhomme, making cakes for family birthdays and other events. But word spread once she started posting pictures online.

“I had friends ask me to do cakes for them. It was quite the surprise when I was asked to make a wedding cake,” she said.

“It just took off from there.”

Prudhomme said she’s been experimenting with baking for about 10 years and is still teaching herself new techniques.

Find her on facebook at Brittany’s Edible Art.

Alberni Valley News