Cake is a highlight of many celebrations, but it’s even better when it’s custom-made based on the recipient’s hobbies and passions.
Here are a few Chattanooga bakeries that bake hard-to-eat works of art without regretting destroying such creative efforts.
Reignbow Bakery Business
5600 Brainerd Road
619-733-7576
reignbowbakingco.com
Sierra Shadrick moved from San Diego to Chattanooga and opened Reignbow Baking Company in 2018, but her love for baking began long before that. When she was a high school student, she would use any excuse to make a cake mix, frost it, and bring it to school for her classmates to enjoy. But it wasn’t until she listened to TLC’s popular reality show “Cake Boss” that she realized what an art form cake could be.
“It was inspiring,” she says.
Today, her days are spent making hand-sculpted buttercream flowers to adorn cakes or sculpting interesting shapes – one of the most unusual was a cake made to look like a stack of pancakes to honor a grandparent.
“I thought it was just the sweetest way to incorporate a childhood memory,” she says.
All of its cakes are made from scratch-made doughs using quality ingredients, including vanilla extract made in-house, and most take more than a day or two to prepare. But Shadrick once spent more than 30 hours over a two-week period creating a 4 ½-foot, eight-tier wedding cake, delivered three hours away and stacked on site.
“There’s usually some doubt or nervousness before a project begins, but that all goes away until I take the last step back, spin the cake and smile,” says -She.
Chatta-Cakes Bakery
5143 Hixson Pike
(423) 668-8880
chatta-cakesbakery.com
When Shannon Anderson was little, her favorite toy was her Easy Bake Oven. Today, her oven is a little bigger, producing cakes that showcase people’s personalities and interests.
“Usually, clients send a photo of inspiration,” she says, remembering one cake in particular, the most unusual ever: a cake in the shape of a uterus commissioned by a gynecologist’s office. “I always try to give a special touch to the requested cake to capture the essence of the person being celebrated.”
Chatta-Cakes opened in 2013, but Anderson’s cakes took on a creative dimension as early as 1993 when she baked cakes for her children that went beyond a simple birthday cake with candles.
“That’s when my passion for baking became an integral part of my life,” she says. “I usually feel at peace and happy, hoping or knowing that I’m going to make someone’s day special.”
Staff photo by Matt Hamilton/Kaitlyn Whalen of Chatta-Cakes Bakery uses frosting to embellish a cake.Soft trends
Just like clothing and home decor, cake trends come and go. Cupcakes were once all the rage, but have now given way to their big brothers, grown-up cakes. This includes naked cakes – those without icing on the sides – as well as a more recent trend: Lambeth cakes. Lambeth is reminiscent of the Victorian era with layers of icing and lots of piping, tinsel and other details.
“Very maximalist-chic, if you will,” says Sierra Shadrick of Reignbow Baking Company.
Another trend is dessert bars, says Brianne Hager, owner of B’s Sweets.
“They offer guests a lot more variety,” she says.
B’s candy
440 Timberlinks Drive, Signal Mountain
(423) 521-0373
bssweets.com
Brianne Hager always loved baking cakes as a child, but her imagination took over when she took cake decorating classes as a young mother to make extravagant birthday cakes for her son .
One thing led to another and in 2012 she opened B’s Sweets, where the best-selling confection is a strawberry cake made with homemade strawberry preserves.
She made golf cakes for the bride and groom and a standing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cake for a child. But what comes to mind is a hen party cake, with a “risqué” theme.
“The man who ordered it was from New York, so he had a taxi driver from Chattanooga come pick it up and deliver it,” Hager recalled. “The driver was an old man and he asked to see it. I tried to talk to him about it before he opened the box, and he was surprised by the detailed resemblance. My face was completely red .”
Hager recommends customers order cakes at least two weeks in advance, and she already has orders on her calendar for spring 2025.
“I tell my clients all the time that a cake doesn’t have to have the person’s name on it or say ‘happy birthday,’” says Hager. “It should be personalized enough to express the celebration.”
