A bride walks into a bakery…

Cake Goddess co-founder Heather Domingue sits across the table from a beaming bride eager to discuss wedding cakes. The young woman wants to forego prosaic bone-white layers in favor of something different, something that expresses the culture of her relationship. She and her fiancé love the French Quarter, she offers, passing Domingue a picture of the twosome. It’s also where they plan to tie the knot.

Unfazed, Domingue starts drawing. She turns her sketchbook around shortly to reveal a scene of Old World New Orleans unfolding carousel-like across tiered layers, the top one finished with tiny fondant sculptures of a laughing bride and groom flanked by streetlights. The lively details and warm color scheme might depart from tradition, but it represents a growing penchant for cakes that are as much canvas as they are dessert.

Elsewhere is evidence of Domingue’s designs, which she executes with business partner and fellow artist Kim Faucheux, 54. With Domingue, 27, producing the overall concept and Faucheux executing the construction, the team produces cakes that resemble ornate tasseled pillows, favorite children’s characters, hobbies and even specific family memories.

Their topsy-turvy cakes feature layers trimmed in geometric shapes set whimsically off-kilter. Other designs are strikingly realistic. Grooms’ cakes mimic charcoal grills—complete with fondant wieners, shrimp and veggies—beer-stocked ice chests, even a club-wielding Captain Caveman. Wedding cakes can resemble the beadwork and lace on a bride’s actual gown, or feature stunning, sophisticated scrollwork in both modern and traditional patterns and colors.

Drawing from their mutual backgrounds in art and design, Domingue and Faucheux opened Cake Goddess in 2006.

“We saw this as a niche, as something that really wasn’t being done,” says Faucheux, who befriended Domingue while both were working as decorators at Ambrosia Bakery in Baton Rouge. The Food Network, adds Faucheux, had helped to expand awareness in the pastry arts in the last few years, particularly in designer cakes that push past typical fare.

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The Cake Goddess team includes two decorators and a baker, and the all-female force stays booked two weeks in advance. In March, they got another boost with a first place award at the Fifth Annual That Takes the Cake! Sugar Art Show and Cake Competition in Austin for a design based on the song “Love Potion #9.” The intricate finished product included candles, potion bottles, hearts and arrows, and lines of poetry, all produced by hand in buttercream icing. It earned top honors in the professional tiered division.

Speaking of tiers, for towering cakes, Faucheux includes wire skeletons or uses hidden dowels to create a stable base for the finished product. Next, she sculpts the cake freehand, drawing on her past life as an industry draftsman to carve and shape spongy homemade layers into the base for a lively new scene.

Icing and accoutrements come next. A particular point of pride at Cake Goddess, says Domingue, is the team’s ability to make buttercream look as smooth and fine as rolled fondant icing, an ingredient sometimes criticized for a lack of taste.

The process culminates with Domingue reviewing the overall look, often adding a final detail, swirl, or design element. The more labor-intensive cakes can take up to a week to complete.

Though driven by a passion for the visual arts, Domingue and Faucheux knew they had to have winning recipes to sustain a high-end bakery. They developed cake and icing recipes for six months prior to opening, focusing on real butter, cream, and good cocoas. Cake Goddess features red velvet, mocha, butter pecan, white almond, devil’s food and others, and the partners say they’re always willing to create new ones.

“Everything we do,” says Faucheux, “is made to order.” ?cakegoddessllc.com