A lot of food served up in restaurants is compared to art, both in terms of the craft involved and the final product that appears on the plate. Nowhere is this more true than the end result of the many dedicated hours a pastry chef puts into the follies created out of flour and butter and sugar. Cakes in particular require not only the knowledge of chemistry necessary to make a tasty product, but also expertise in physics, sculpture, design and even botany.

For special events like weddings, the cake may well be the centrepiece of the whole affair, with all eyes focussed on the intricate decorative details and all mouths waiting anxiously for a taste to see if the “inner beauty” matches the pretty outer bits.

Hinna Ahmed and Sarah Van Sinclair of Cakes on Cakes started making cakes together about three years ago, creating cakes mostly for family members at first, and then offering their services to the public earlier this year.

Hinna had a background in pastry, working at a Whitby bakery in the 90s where she learned the craft from a pastry chef freshly graduated from the Cordon Bleu. While both she and Sarah work on each cake they produce, the work is generally divided so that Hinna does the baking, piping and fondant work, while Sarah creates the buttercream icing and sculpts the floral decorations, an often arduous task that can be especially time-consuming depending on the requirements.

At present, their enterprise is a part-time one; they produce two to three cakes per month, with items ranging in price between $300 and $500, and make a point of working with the customer to personalize both the flavours and decoration. Their previous work ranges from a giant softball cake to a wedding cake decorated to resemble an Indian tapestry, to a birthday cake for Sarah’s Grandmother’s 90th birthday – a classic vanilla cake with a brown sugar and fresh pineapple reduction. Says Hinna, “I would prefer not to make the same style of cake twice; we like to pull inspiration from all sorts of things, our gardens, fabrics, wallpapers, books, and our own brainstorming ideas”.

Currently the two women work alone, but joke that they have a large official taste testing panel. They promote their business through a website and word of mouth. When asked about their plans for the future of Cakes on Cakes, they were both pragmatic. “It would be wonderful to say we make cakes for a living - imagine!” Sarah offered. “Cakes make people so happy! But I’m not sure I’d like to expand in the sense of more people… what we do is such a labour of love. A small pastry shop with Hinna would be lovely!”

Sarah and Hinna are able to make cakes in all shapes and sizes, from cupcakes right up to multi-tier creations with a different flavour in each layer. They are delighted to work with their customers to create a memorable one-of-a-kind work of art for any size group. They can be contacted through their website, Cakes on Cakes.

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