The king is in his counting house, counting out his money. The queen is in her parlour, eating bread and honey. The maid is in the garden, hanging out the clothes, and down comes a blackbird and pecks off her nose. This extraordinary scene is taking place on the top of a cake, in Cakes & Co, in Blackrock, just south of Dublin.
All the characters are picked out in meticulous detail, rendered in sugar craft. There is the king, complete with money. Next to him is the queen, complete with honey, and a tiny blackbird is pecking off the nose of the maid as she hangs out the clothes. It is extraordinary. But if you say to Joanie, Rosanna and Leslie, who run Cakes & Co, that sugarcraft is the most esoteric of the arts in the culinary firmament, an artform so detailed and meticulous as to beggar belief, they just say, "Well, anyone can do it". And they mean it.
"We would guarantee any beginner will be able to do marzipan and decoration on a cake after just four evenings," they say. "We need to know, for our own sakes, that after eight hours you will be able to ice and decorate a cake. We do a class on icing and decorating a Christmas cake every year, and the students will be able to ice the cake on the day". To me, this seems incredible, but not so incredible as the speciality cakes of which Joannie, Rosanna and Leslie are the masters. "We did a Van Gogh once for a man, and it's framed now," Rosanna says.
They recite the list of speciality cakes made for clients as if they were little more than bread rolls. "Peter Pan was the first cake we ever made," Leslie says. Recently, to celebrate a centenary of the law firm William Fry, they constructed a complete courtroom scene, with the judge on the bench, the jury in their seats and bewigged lawyers battling it out. "And we also did 29 cakes for Esat Digiphone, one for each of their branches."
Ever since Joannie Langbroek and Leslie Keogh set up Cakes & Co five years ago, to be joined shortly afterward by Rosanna Mulligan, their speciality has been commisioned cakes - extravagant sugarcraft works to celebrate weddings, birthdays, christenings and other special events in people's lives, as well as a healthy dose of corporate business. "People want themed cakes now for weddings, cakes that say something about them and their interests," says Leslie. "Recently we did a cake where the man is playing a piano while his bride reclines on a chaise longue. And a cake with three molar teeth, gums and all, for a dentist." "There is nothing you can't do," they say. "But the standing horse is the most difficult, the horse rearing on his hind legs."
Of course, the cakes are designed to be eaten. Recently, there has been a move away from fruit cakes, and they now find more and more people requesting madeira, chocolate and even carrot cakes - the latter becoming increasingly popular for weddings, even though hardly traditional. When I visited the shop, the day before their celebrations were due to begin for their 5th birthday, the team was working on a cake which was a replica of the shop itself - both floors, fully detailed. They were going about it as if it is the stuff of everyday life to make perfect models of your workplace in sugar.
Cakes & Co, Rock Hill, Blackrock, Co Dublin tel: 01-2836544, fax: 2804862, venture24@indigo.ie. Commissions accepted, regular sugarcraft classes held throughout the year.