Andrea Webster - Reviews

Reviews & test

"Your hand-painted cake was worth turning 50 for!"

AH, Glasgow October 2006

"The cake exceeded our expectations. It was the highlight of the day....."

KS, Elgin September 2006

"We just wanted to say how wonderful our wedding cake was. It looked spectacular and tasted amazing - we even managed to sample all the different tiers! It was certainly a talking point and deservedly so. We loved it!"

SR, Stonehaven June 2006

"This year my birthday tea was an especially joyous occasion - due in the main, I have to say, to the surprise cake! It takes credit for a successful day. It was truly delicious and disappeared, slice by slice, in a remarkably short time."

SC, Elgin February 2006

"Thank you for your beautiful cake - it was absolutely delicious!"

DD, Cawdor December 2005

"Our wedding cake was an absolute work of art and delicious, too. We can't wait to eat the top tier next year. Thank you."

MG, Craigellachie September 2005

"Wow. Your cake was amazing. Everybody stopped in their tracks to admire its originality. Thanks so much for everything - you are very talented!"

CL, Nairn July 2005

"It's not often that someone outdoes my mother's cakes - but it just might have happened the other day! Your cake really was beautiful."

WP, June 2005

"I feel I must write to congratulate you on that magnificent cake! I couldn't believe how you could have made it not only correct in every detail but also to taste so good. I am so glad to have photographs as it was a great shame to have to cut into it."

KM, Forres July 2004

"Martha Stewart - eat your heart out! Really can't thank you enough for all you did for our wedding."

PL, Ballindalloch July 2004

Who's on Top?
When it comes to the ultimate wedding cake, there's lots of competition for the top tier.

By Walter Nicholls
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Page F01

Last August, a detail-driven, Brisbane-born pastry chef, considered by many to be the premier specialty cakemaker in the region, dropped an unexpected and bittersweet bombshell on Washington's wedding world.

After eight years on the top tier, Andrea Webster notified a select group of wedding planners and caterers that she was closing her business. No further orders would be accepted for her avant-garde, soft-hued, hand-painted wedding cakes.

The last week in December she moved to Scotland with her husband and two children to "pursue our dream." The Webster family hopes to purchase a small farm and settle into the quiet, rural life.

Lavish cakes, for the moment, are not part of her plan.

"I'm going to downshift. I'm burned out," Webster said on one of her final days in Washington. "There is just too much demand for something that so few can deliver."

There are more than 1,000 sources - bakeries, caterers, hotels and supermarkets - for wedding cakes in the area. For example, the busy Silver Spring-based Creative Cakes bakery, during the high season (April to November), makes 25 to 40 wedding cakes per week. The average price is $4 per serving.

But individual specialty bakers, such as Webster, create the most coveted cakes and are a rare breed. These leading bakers go all out to give clients individual attention, from the initial, exploratory meeting where one-of-a-kind designs are discussed to the defining moment - the personal delivery of the finished cake.

The majority of wedding cakes sold are iced with rich buttercream frosting. But specialty bakers, for the most part, cover cakes with rolled fondant - a sweet, chewy sugar paste that gives the surface an exceptionally smooth finish. Fondant work is labor intensive.

"It's five times more difficult than buttercream," says Fran Wheat, owner of Fran's Cake & Candy Supplies in Fairfax. "You're taking something with the consistency of pie dough. Rolling it out to a quarter inch. Draping it down and smoothing it out and removing the air bubbles."

But that's only one of the many demanding tasks for the specialty pastry chef.

Brides also custom-order fine, sugar handwork such as Victorian-style lace pieces, painted portraits, molded pearls and piped embroidery. Depending on the undertaking, custom bakers spend hours and even days delicately painting the cake and attaching the hand-crafted sugar flowers that perfectly match, in every detail, the bridal bouquet or the lace on the bodice of a bridal gown.

"It's a time-consuming production process where each petal is applied in sections with gum glue, over and over again," says Wheat. A full-blown, hand-molded rose can have seven rows of petals and take 45 minutes to complete. "And if you need 50, you have to make 100 because they will break," she says.

The brides work with the baker to choose special combinations of cake flavors (passion fruit or winter spice) and fillings (kirsch mousseline or dulce de leche). Hours are spent standing, bent over a project. The work is so demanding that these bakers can complete only one to four cakes per week. That's why such cakes can cost four to five times as much as standard cakes, as much as $18 per serving.

"I had no life. When you get to the top, your clients call you constantly. You have to hold their hand. These brides are so focused on one day that they expect you to jump through hoops for them," says pastry chef Jill Light who closed her well-respected Alexandria-based Jilly's Cake Studio last January. (Light moved to Tucson, where she owns and operates an inn.)

Leaving a Void
Light's and Webster's departures are significant: They left behind only a select few pastry chefs in the area who create exceptional cakes.

Wedding consultants were caught off guard.

"There was no reason to go anywhere else," says Bethesda-based event planner Bonnie Schwartz. "Andrea's work had a refinement that just got better and better, year after year."

"Her work is like porcelain, like an artist. And she is a really good woman, so easy to work with," says Bambi Jenkins, co-owner of Foxglove Design in Baltimore.

Still, not everyone is saddened by Webster's departure. For some fellow pastry chefs her move to Scotland is excellent news indeed.

Leslie Goldman-Poyourow of Gaithersburg bakes under the name Fancy Cakes by Leslie.

"When I heard [Webster] was leaving, I thought, 'Good, first Jilly. Now another cake person out of the way,' " says Goldman-Poyourow. "When Andrea was here, [wedding planners] didn't look at anyone else."

But no one, perhaps, is happier than the woman who preceded Webster as the reigning cakebaker.

"Am I glad she's gone? Yes, I'm glad," says pastry chef Ann Amernick, co-owner of Palena restaurant and nearby Amernick Pastry in Cleveland Park. "I lost massive amounts of business to her."

Amernick has wowed Washington wedding-goers for 33 years with her delicate, fondant-covered cakes decorated with tiny sugar paintings nestled in perfect sugar flowers. She had no rival for more than a decade. Then, along came Webster.

"Andrea was known as the doyenne of wedding cakes," Amernick says now. "Well, I did that when there was no one else."

Webster moved to Washington in 1988 as the chef for the Australian ambassador's residence. That job lasted seven years, until, says Webster, "a difficult ambassador came along." In need of a job where "I could hone all my skills together," she decided to make custom wedding cakes.

Says Webster: "I didn't expect it to take off. I thought it would be little by little."

Well, take off it did. In one year she became the key cakemaker in town.

"People were eager to try someone new. They liked my soft colors, the homemade flavors of the cake itself," she says. "And my sugar flowers were less fussy and more edible-looking than the ones that Ann was doing. People liked my look and liked dealing with me."

She will not miss the late nights, the anxiety or the occasional "bossy, barking, rude people who treat you like a servant." As well as "some painful mothers of brides who call and call changing some minor detail of the cake design. People think it's just butter, sugar, eggs and milk," says Webster. "They don't realize they're paying for my precious time."

In the end, the most fulfilling aspect of Andrea Webster Cakes was delivering the finished product to the wedding site. "I'd finally get some acknowledgement for being shut up in a little kitchen. People would go 'ooh and ahh.' "

Filling a Void
Webster continues to receive cake inquiries from caterers and brides-to-be. She directs prospective clients to Narcisa Vieira-Castillo, whose Falls Church cake business is Cakes Unique.

"I think Narcisa is very talented and has a lot of promise. As a newcomer, she is much better than I was at the same stage, much more professional," says Webster. "She just needs to loosen up, come up with her own style and acknowledge that she is an artist as well as a bloody good baker."

Vieira-Castillo met Webster two years ago.

"I was working as a pastry chef at the Ritz-Carlton downtown when I called her out of the blue. I knew she was the best and I wanted to work for her," says Vieira-Castillo, who was born in Mozambique and raised in Portugal.

But instead of hiring her as an assistant, Webster sent Vieira-Castillo the clients she did not have time for. "We clicked," says Vieira-Castillo. Webster also allowed her protege to reproduce her most sought-after cake designs. A pastry star was born.

"I do think Narcisa is the next Andrea," says Beth Hughes, owner of Dish Caterers in Georgetown. "She has a comparable product, with beautiful, fresh flavors and she's easy to deal with."

Still, there are other contenders ready to replace Webster. Event planners and caterers each have a favorite.

Some say that pastry chef Patty Collette, noted for her drop-dead, true-to-life sugar gum paste flowers, may get the nod and move skyward. Collette's stunning cakes sell for as much as $18 per serving. She calls her Annandale-based business Patty Cakes.

"Patty does fabulous and imaginative work with sugar. For the top of one cake, she did a mini-set of Vuitton luggage," says Terri Bergman, an event coordinator for Silver Spring-based Distinctive Events by Susan B. Katz.

Wedding planner Gigi Lantz of Weddings by Gigi in Alexandria likes the precision-crafted sugar work of Goldman-Poyourow.

"Leslie is as close to Andrea as you can get. She's very talented and goes along with what a client wants. That's so important," says Lantz, who has worked in the business for 20 years.

Wedding planner Jodi Moraru of Chevy Chase will be calling Loretta Nicholas, owner of Cake Lore in Centreville. Nicholas is known for delicate, lacy, Australian-style sugar work.

"She is phenomenal, a well-kept secret with a great eye for detail," says Moraru, who has pointed clients to Webster for the past six years. "Loretta can give you that smooth fondant look in buttercream."

Caterer Bill Homan, co-owner of Design Cuisine in Arlington, says, "With Andrea gone and Jilly gone, I'm recommending Marilyn Mueller. She is very creative, does wonderful things with chocolate." Mueller's exquisite, hand-painted sugar flowers are perfect in every detail.

Susan Gage, owner of Susan Gage Caterers in Oxon Hill, agrees with Homan that Mueller's Terra Cocoa cake and chocolate studio in Chantilly is the one to watch.

"She is a brilliant baker who understands the chemistry of baking. Her product is really fresh and she can do any style of cake. I don't think she has an equal, except Ann [Amernick]. But Marilyn is more creative," says Gage.

(Both Amernick and Mueller have worked at the White House, Amernick as an assistant pastry chef and Mueller as a research assistant on domestic affairs.)

For her part, Amernick says she would like to reclaim the crown and have a bigger slice of the cake business.

"Wedding cakes keep my bakery going," says Amernick, who is also known for terrific, melt-in-the-mouth caramels topped with a smidgen of gold leaf.

She understands Webster's burnout.

"Just the lifting of a cake breaks your back," she says.

She has no idea who will leap forward from the pack.

"I don't keep my finger on the pulse. I'm out of the loop," says Amernick. "Let's put it this way: I'm swimming and I don't have time to look around and see what everybody else is doing. I'm just trying to stay afloat."