ADMD#1: Madison Lee - Cake Artist
- In culinary school, they did a section of pastry, and it was the first time where the butter and sugar...it just felt like home, whereas everything else i was doing in school, it was not as natural or easy. So in the end I guess it found me, I diidn’t really have a choice.
- I want to learn fron people who I admired. One thing I really learned in the culinary school, is it’s really not about the school, it’s really about the person that mentors you and gives you their love for whatever the trade is.
- Okay well, I don’t wanna learn from them, I wanna learn from who taught them. That seems like the better way to go. The more research I did about cakes and things, I learned that it really wasn’t somethings from here. It’s actually from UK. There was nothing like that here that I could find. So I went to the bank, I emptied my bank account, I packed a backpack, I went to JFK, I brought a ticket to London, no phone, no computer, no nothing, and I was there for four months. And I learn from as many people as I could, people I loved, who I so admired, I learned a history and a respect for it, where here it was like, oh well, that’s on TV. It doesn’t matter. There it was like an honor to be making cakes. It was something of real value. So when I came back, not only had my whole view of cakes, and what they represented, and how it was a tradition I was fulfilling, everthing really changed and clicked.
- The cakes are big and I’m only five feet.
- There is no second chance. You have to work smarter, not harder.
- You’re a prodcut of how you grew up, really. It’s not going anywhere, you can’t make that go away. There could be more, you could always be better, you could always be pushing. It’s NYC, if you stop, someone else come in, they are coming for you. You have to show up, and it has to be perfect. I’m easily here at least 16,18 hours a day, easily, if not more. I love it, so where else would I be? At home watching TV? For What?
- It’s done when I say it’s done, I don’t care what was on the sched, I don’t care what was talked about in an email or on a phone call, it’s done when I think it looks like a completed work. It’s a piece of art at the wedding. I know the inside’s great, but it has to look appropriate and right, and that’s my art.
- I’m great at seeing you at your consultation and designing and inderstanding aesthetics and everything like that, and then as a chef, I’m also the last hand on every single cake that goes out the door.
