Sweets for Every Occasion
On trend and in demand, a Buffalo-based dessert designer and two bakeshop owners share their unique take on desserts and dessert tables to celebrate those big occasions.
Customize Your Style
Marisa Battaglia, dessert designer and founder of B Sweet Designs, believes life’s special moments are worth celebrating.
“My motto: If you’re celebrating, do it in style,” she says. “And to me, a celebration isn’t a celebration without dessert.” B Sweet Designs specializes in custom dessert tables for weddings and milestone celebrations, with a focus on setting trends rather than following them.
She and her husband were very involved in the planning of their wedding at Niagara-on-the-Lake, which included a dessert table for their guests—at that time, an uncommon feature at a wedding reception.
She wanted to bring the idea to brides and hostesses in Buffalo. According to Battaglia, every dessert table she designs is done with the couple in mind.
“Whether these two people want a two-, three-, or four-tier cake, cutting cakes, or an assortment of custom sweets, I match selections to the flavor profiles and the look they prefer. I want every item on that table to reflect their personalities, their preferences—who they are. That’s what makes each table unique.”
Battaglia says what she presents is art—edible art—due to a laser-focused attention to aesthetics, unique use of decorative elements, and precise color matching.
“When a couple says their color scheme includes sage green or ice blue, I want to know exactly which color they’re referring to,” she says. “It starts with a consultation. I’m a visual learner, so I ask clients to bring in examples of what they envision.
“From there, I create an inspiration board that combines their colors, their floral, and anything in their lives that has a meaning unique to them.” Battaglia relies upon her education in graphic design and a background in marketing as she sets out to create a fairytale event. She describes the dessert tables she creates as “Marie Antoinette meets Alice in Wonderland.”
Her search for memorable sweets has taken her around the world from Paris to Toronto. After each trip, she returns to her hometown filled with inspiration that winds up on dessert tables of happy brides and grooms. Most recently, she visited London, where she sought out the poshest bakeries in the city in her pursuit of exquisitely crafted sweets.
“Whether a gold-covered hazelnut and milk chocolate éclair from Maître Choux, or a chocolate peppermint cupcake in silver foil with rosette buttercream, metallic dragées and a cutout sugar snowflake from Peggy Porschen bakeshop, London is teeming with bakeries that elevate sweets to an art form,” Battaglia says.
Color is one trend her clients helped shape in 2021. “From sky blue, pale yellow and magenta to colors inspired by sunsets, color statements hit a high note,” she recalls. “Although the classics never go out of style—gold leaf, champagne, blush and white—clients wanted to stretch their wings and go all out for color this past year.”
Cake treats like cakesicles (a paddle-shaped cake on a stick) and cake pops (a round cake ball)—some decorated as bride and groom—are requested by many clients.
“Sponge candy in a decorative bowl and novelty candies such as champagne jelly beans, rosé gummy bears, gold-wrapped truffles and sours are some of our offerings,” Battaglia says. “And chocolate chip cookies, for the guys, are always a hit.”
B Sweet Designs collaborates with five to 10 local bakeshops and several candy makers. Battaglia crafts edible sugar flowers and creates some signage for her singular dessert tables.
According to Battaglia, dessert boxes-to-go for weddings or events have been a hot item during the pandemic.
Unrestricted Options
At Fig Tree Patisserie, founder and head pastry chef Natalie Schultz has combined a love of French pastry with a love for her grandparents, their baking, their Sicilian roots and their backyard fig trees.
Her signature macarons, custom cakes topped with macarons, and her vegan, gluten-free and keto options are featured on dessert tables for weddings and special occasions.
According to Schultz, 50 percent of Fig Tree Patisserie orders are meant to create memorable special occasions with 20 percent specifically serving wedding parties. Her authentically French macarons draw return customers.
One trend she sees are edible favors that will be taken home as sweet remembrances of a special day. “Packaged macarons tied with a bow are our most requested edible favor,” Schultz says. “We are known for crazier flavors like sugar cookie and hot fudge sundae macarons.”
A macaron tower, as a centerpiece and replacement for a tiered cake on a dessert table, is another popular request, according to Schultz. Other tabletop sweets are parfait cups in lemon cream and strawberry shortcake, cupcake towers and customized pastry and cutout cookies.
“My customers are asking less for a traditional tiered cake,” she says. “Cutting cakes on dessert tables along with more choices for guests make it easier to tailor a table to meet everyone’s food needs.”
Schultz fields requests for naked cakes and donut towers too. If cake is on the menu, lighter flavors are preferred. Buttercream frosting is replacing fondant.
Though Schultz shies away from theme cakes, she is a fan of letter cakes and so are her customers.
“A single letter atop a cake, the first letter of the featured guest’s first or last name, displayed prominently on top, is one of our best sellers,” Schultz says.
Fresh fruit and fresh floral are often used to decorate the light and fluffy cakes Schultz makes from recipes she has devised herself.
Add Some Sparkle
Shetice Jackson, owner of Cake Crazy Bakery and a trained chef, was never interested in baking. A 2001 Culinary Institute of America graduate, she was hired as a garde-manger chef by one of Emeril Lagasse’s Las Vegas restaurants nearly straight out of school.
Then one year, she couldn’t find a sparkly cake for her mother’s New Year’s Eve birthday, so she decided to bake her own.
“The look on my mother’s face when she saw that cake; she was so excited, I almost cried,” Jackson says. “From that moment, I became obsessed with baking the perfect cake. My mother said I was ‘Cake Crazy,’ so I named my bakeshop Cake Crazy Bakery.”
Cake Crazy Bakery opened its doors in 2014 and is currently the only Black-owned bakery in Western NY.
Jackson creates all her own recipes, which use real butter, fresh-squeezed lemon, strawberries and other fresh ingredients. She has her own version of whipped buttercream frosting that is applied to a smooth finish and looks like fondant but tastes less sweet. Her bakeshop specializes in custom cakes and Southern desserts like sweet potato pie, pineapple upside down cake, 7 Up cake and caramel pound cake.
“Brides ask for gold and bling as cake decorations,” she says. “We use an edible gold paint which is applied by airbrushing or painted by hand. At the opposite end of the spectrum are naked cakes, without frosting, which are trending now. Cupcakes are very popular, too.”
Cake Crazy Bakery offers 20 flavors of cupcakes including strawberry crunch, pink lemonade, orange creamsicle, cassata, turtle, caramel and banana split. Customers can choose their own custom frosting colors and bling to match cakes or cupcakes to the theme of an occasion or wedding.
