Cake decorators have sweet success at Payless

For the senior cake decorators at Payless Foods, no request is too difficult to fulfill.

Around this time of year, Jennifer Holmes and Pia Stewart are creating cakes for the bakery in the Freeland grocery store that celebrate spooky holidays and commemorate the autumnal season.

“My thought was to go with a little bit of pretty and a little bit of creepy, because I love Halloween but I’m really good at flowers,” Holmes said while piping pink, blue and magenta blooms, creating a crown to adorn the grinning La Catrina skull on her cake that has a Dia De Los Muertos theme.

Nearly three decades ago, Stewart, along with the other bakery employees, was paid to attend classes and learn how to decorate cakes when the store was no longer able to order cakes from a supplier on the mainland. Stewart has since passed that training along to other prospective cake decorators, such as Holmes, who started working in the Payless bakery around 2010.

“I wanted to learn cake decorating, so I made it a point to watch her and take stuff home and learn it at home, then come back and be like, ‘Look, I can do this,’” Holmes recalled.

Though the cakes and frosting are produced off-site – which is pretty standard in the industry, Stewart said – the Payless cake decorators have always had the leeway to decorate as they please. Stewart loves mixing colors of the frosting and finding out what combinations go best together. Holmes enjoys incorporating candy found on the grocery store shelves into her work, such as a cinnamon bear she once transformed into a crab.

Both women find cake decorating to be a much-needed creative outlet in their busy lives. A Langley resident, Stewart teaches junior high history and high school geography at Island Christian Academy, while Holmes, a Coupeville resident, is a paralegal. Their part-time jobs at Payless are their second jobs. Often, they take on early morning shifts in the bakery to decorate.

“It’s just like any art form,” Holmes said of the sweet calling. “Once you learn how the medium works in your hands, you can do anything with it. You know how hard to push the frosting out because you’ve done it a million times and you know how it’s gonna make the shape when it pulls out.”

She is proud not to use fondant icing in any of her creations. Instead, the elements of her cakes consist of buttercream frosting and sometimes candy.

Unless it’s graduation season, the most popular cake request is usually for a birthday. The pair have made many Whidbey-themed cakes, such as one with a ferry dock cleverly fashioned out of Kit Kats.

Holmes said one of her favorite requests was a hot dog in a bun. One of Stewart’s more unusual requests was for a pregnant belly on top of a baby shower cake.

“Succulents are a very trendy thing right now,” Stewart said, adding that she has also recently decorated some cakes with an “elegant swamp” theme.

Stewart has seen other trends come and go in the decorating business, especially when it comes to wedding cakes. Swags, swirls and elaborate setups of the 90s have since turned to something more simple with a couple of fresh flowers.

“They are more expensive than our regular cakes, but compared to other places we are very competitive in our prices. The comment that we get the most is not only did it look beautiful, but it tasted good,” she said, adding that that is not always the case at weddings.

Often, frosted flowers and other elements are frozen for easier placement on top of a cake. Holmes placed a series of red-capped mushrooms she piped on a cake she is attempting to turn into a mossy log. Green frosting mixed with coconut, she has found, creates a perfect mossy look.

She has also been busy decorating a series of Halloween cupcakes, from wolves to eyeballs to Frankenstein’s monster to bloody brains to Oreo spiders.

Cakes aren’t her only passion. Holmes is also a wildlife photographer, and prints of many Whidbey critters can be found on a card rack within the store.

Photo by David Welton Halloween cupcakes galore can be found in the Payless Foods bakery, including eyeballs, spiders, bloody brains, wolves and Frankenstein’s monster.

Photo by David Welton Jennifer Holmes, left, places red-capped mushrooms made of buttercream frosting on her cake while Pia Stewart pipes with bright colors on her autumnal cake.

Photo by David Welton Jennifer Holmes pipes a colorful flower crown for the La Catrina skull on her cake that has a Dia De Los Muertos theme.

Photo by David Welton Jennifer Holmes places red-capped mushrooms made of buttercream frosting on her cake. Coconut mixed with green frosting gives the perfect mossy appearance.