Madeline Bach Transcript
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Hi, everyone. You're listening to The Future Of Food Is You, a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host, Abena Anim-Somuah, and each week I talk to emerging talents in the food world and they share what they're up to as well as their dreams and predictions for what's ahead. I love this new generation of chefs, bakers, and creatives making their way in the world of food, drink, media and tech.
Today's guest is Madeline Bach, the New York City-based cake artist behind Frosted Hag. If you haven't seen Frosted Hag's cakes before, definitely visit her Instagram for a peek at her colorful maximalist creations. In this episode, Madeline and I discuss the inspiration behind her cakes, her time working as a gallerina at a Lower East Side art gallery and the meditative state she gets in while baking. Madeline and I also talk about why she loves being on the other side of a celebration. Stay tuned for our chat.
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Now, let's check in with today's guest. Madeline, thank you so much for joining us on The Future Of Food Is You.
Madeline Bach:
Thank you so much for having me.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
And it's your first podcast, so congratulations.
Madeline Bach:
It's my first pod.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Well, we always like to start off by asking our guests, can you tell us where you grew up and how did food show up in your life?
Madeline Bach:
So, I grew up in beautiful south Jersey, about 10 minutes outside of Philadelphia. My dad cooked a lot. My mom worked quite late when I was growing up. We just had Emeril Lagasse on the TV all the time. We had Guy Fieri on Martha. The Food Network was just always blasting and he was always making anything. Then, obviously, a lot of just really loving home cooked Italian meals and then a gorgeous balance of fast food. I had my first Big Mac and I was like, "I need to eat this every day." My dad was like, "Sure, see how that feels?" And then I got cut off, but I was always just like, "Eat whatever."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
If your dad were to have a menu, what would be on that menu?
Madeline Bach:
He loves a stew.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Hearty, healthy, fills the crowd?
Madeline Bach:
Yeah, super hearty.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Nice.
Madeline Bach:
He loves baking now. He sends me a lot of cake photos.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh, wow.
Madeline Bach:
And he will just bake a crazy banana strawberry carrot cake raisin pile, so he's really creative.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
A pile, that's very generous.
Madeline Bach:
Yeah, it's basically a pile. It's a beautiful pile, but it's a whole variety of that. And then when I was home for COVID, I cooked a lot with my parents every day. That's where I really started cooking myself. So, we had the whole sourdough attack and just learned a lot together with that.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. I hope we have a graveyard for all the sourdough-
Madeline Bach:
We need-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
... that were ambitiously started, but never...
Madeline Bach:
RIP.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. Being in South Jersey, you're so close to the city, so you move here for school. And like any NYC college student, you got to make a couple bucks to make life work, and you find a job at a local bake shop after you graduate. How did you get the gig and what was some of the most important lessons you learned at that time?
Madeline Bach:
I kept failing my math requirement at NYU. Even though I was an art major, they needed me to do that. I was on a temporary leave and I went into this bakery on my birthday in 2017 and they had a hiring sign. I was with my roommate at the time, who's an amazing chef, and she was like, "Girl, get a job. Go do that." So, I started and it was my first kitchen job, and so it really taught me the ins and outs of what it's like to have a storefront business in New York, what it's like to actually clean, actually deep clean, super importantly, how to work in such a small space, which carries on with me today because my kitchen is tiny.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's just New York for you.
Madeline Bach:
Yeah. And just, yeah, so much. I feel like I didn't know how to do anything before that job, and it was like
I took so much under, learned so much patience, so much about communicating with others and working in a team.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Were you front of house and transitioned to back of house or were you mostly in the back learning how to make...
Madeline Bach:
So, I started off just doing counter, serving dishes. Then I always wanted to be the girl that was frosting the cakes in the front. So, I slowly made my way towards that. And then anytime I did, they would be like, "We can't. It's crazy."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
It's a nice pile, yeah.
Madeline Bach:
Exactly, it's the pile again, but then I would go in super early. I would have class at 4:00 PM, I would go into the bakery at 6:00, and my coworker, who knew how to frost cake, she would leave a cake for me and she'd be like, "Do whatever to this. Practice. I can wipe it off. I can fix it."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow.
Madeline Bach:
So, eventually, I got my way and then I was the one that was doing the Valentine's Day shift that got like 40 cakes at once.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow. Happy Valentine's Day.
Madeline Bach:
Yeah. I will never forget the tremble of my hands writing on a cake.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
It's so cool that you said you always want to be the girl frosting the cake, because then you start to make cakes on your own and you become what is known as the Frosted Hag, or your nom de plume, so to speak. I was just getting dinner with some friends last night, I was telling them about this interview and they're like, "I am obsessed with the name."
Madeline Bach:
Oh my God, thank you.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
So, they were like, "Frosted Hag"-
Madeline Bach:
Real ones get it.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
... and I was like, "Yeah, like witchy." So, how did you decide on the name?
Madeline Bach:
I was making cakes on my own for probably three months before I made the Instagram account, because I was just like, "What am I doing?" Then when I was thinking of a name, people were like, "Make it Maddie cakes, blah, blah", whatever. I was like, "I just want to make it an extension of me." And then my personal account, admin reveal, is tired hag.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Admin reveal.
Madeline Bach:
So I was like, "These cakes are me."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's so good.
Madeline Bach:
It's private, you can pass, whatever, but I was just like, "Why not make it Frosted Hag? I feel like that works. I feel like the energy, the character of the cakes is so hagish and so... It's silly. It's the way that hags behave in folklore. It's like the exact foresty, witchy vibe."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's awesome. And your cakes on Instagram, I love them. They're so whimsical and magical.
Madeline Bach:
Oh, thank you.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I feel like they could easily fit into Sofia Coppola's “Marie Antoinette,” if she did a punk version, or Tim Burton's “Alice in Wonderland” with the tea party table. Can you map out what the mood board for Frosted Hag cakes look like and what or whom you're inspired by?
Madeline Bach:
Both my grandmothers were incredible artists. On my mom's side, my grandmother was a dancer.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Very cool.
Madeline Bach:
And then on my dad's side, a painter. So, I grew up with her literally just over my shoulder all the time being like, "You need to be painting, you need to be drawing. You need to do something, or we're not sitting here." So, I feel like that always carried through. I live with all of her paintings now, and I feel like there's so many moments in those paintings that show up in all of my cakes.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
So beautiful.
Madeline Bach:
I have my own drawing practice as well, so I feel like the way that I classically learned how to work with color translates. I mean, I feel like I think of Lisa Frank all the time too, because I'm like, "What's the most embedded thing in my brain from childhood as well?"
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Truly core files, yeah. I mean, I know before your life as a full-time cake artist, which you just started doing in January, congratulations-
Madeline Bach:
Thank you.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
... your full-time on Frosted Hag, you worked in art galleries in Chinatown, which I think it's so cool being in the art world in New York City. Are there any styles or people that you think also helped shape how you think about your creative process when you're making cakes?
Madeline Bach:
Yeah, definitely. When I started at the gallery... So, I moved back. I had made one cake for a friend's birthday. And then a friend of a friend texted me asking to make their friend's cake. I was like, "Wrong number." Then I actually just started making cakes for people and telling them... But that was also when I started at the gallery and my boss was always just like, "You need to pick this up. This is amazing, keep doing it." And I was figuring out how to run that space with him and then also start my own business. So, I feel like being around all of those people and then just learning so many details of what goes into running any kind of business at that time was super important, and then just getting to connect with artists all the time.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. You have seasonal fruits and sometimes you have edible flowers, no cake really looks the same.
Madeline Bach:
None of them.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
How do you source your ingredients?
Madeline Bach:
I don't go too far or too wide. I keep it simple.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
And you're in Lower East Side.
Madeline Bach:
Yeah. So, I love going to Joy's Flower Pot on Hester.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Nice.
Madeline Bach:
They have incredible flowers. And I love going to Kalustyan's in Kips Bay. I'm going to run there after this.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yes. Oh, that's such a great place.
Madeline Bach:
That's where the dried rose buds come in. That's where the rock candy comes from. Everything. I can't go in a store without buying something, especially if it has any kind of candy, food, flour, whatever. So, I'm just like... I'm a hoarder and I just-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. You just have a little treasure trove that you put on cakes.
Madeline Bach:
Yeah. Exactly.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's really awesome. When it comes to the techniques and creating your style, how do you feel like you're coming to develop them now?
Madeline Bach:
I feel like it was really through so much screw up at the bakery, I immediately fell in love with it and knew that I wanted to learn the correct way to do it, quote, unquote, and then find a way to build that out from there. I think it just intuitively came to me once I did it enough times, served enough cakes, made enough horrible looking cakes. I feel like with anything you make that's physical and creative, there's so much trial and error that goes into it and you really have to be all in it. That's where baking is also super healing for me, because there's no room for me. I'm like, "Someone's going to pick this up and eat it, or their kid's going to eat it. I cannot be thinking about whatever's going on. I have to be in the zone and I have to let whatever happen, happen after and just focus."
Then I feel like when I am in that zone, there's actually a lot of other things in my life that get a lot of clarity. So, the more that I do, it's just a more-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, it's cathartic in a way.
Madeline Bach:
Yeah. It's super cathartic.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
When you're actually making the cakes as they are, do you have a specific base recipe that you're using?
Madeline Bach:
I tweak and mess with just a basic white cake recipe for a lot of them, and then I'll add in certain flavors. I'll add in spices. If someone wants vanilla chai, that gets worked on. And then I have... I don't know how many fillings are on my website. I got to update that, but there's a bunch of fillings, curds and compotes. I just work off of whatever orders people are giving me, and then I'm always using Swiss meringue buttercream, but when I'm assembling, that is it.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's your schtick, yeah.
Madeline Bach:
The cake goes on, and then there's some strange layer that's in some strange place, and then I'll put something on the side that was a scrap.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
No two of your cakes look the same. I don't think I've ever seen one the same.
Madeline Bach:
There are two that I think are too similar, but I'll keep that-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, but it's probably like they're fraternal twins or something. What I love about you too is you pride yourself on making cakes for other events. I feel like we always think cake, birthday, wedding, but you make cakes for divorces or even Harry Styles' concert when he came for his grand Madison Square Garden tour. How do you work with your clients to use cake as a medium to celebrate and commemorate life events?
Madeline Bach:
People either give me a lot of information on what's going on and why they want their cake, or they give me not a lot, but regardless, it's always a really special collaboration and I feel like even if I'm just getting, "These are the flavors I want, these are the three colors", there's always emotion that goes into each cake, and there's always personality, and I feel like I'm always on the other side of a celebration, or-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Good or bad.
Madeline Bach:
Yeah, good or bad. Or, people can get a cake for no reason at all, and that's amazing.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Is there one type of celebration you would love to make a cake for that you haven't made one for yet?
Madeline Bach:
I want a cake to float in a body of water, and I want someone to have an event that would make sense for that.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, because I know the Paris Olympics are trying to get them to swim in the sand, maybe like-
Madeline Bach:
Yeah, something completely ridiculous.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
... the Olympic ceremony can be a Frosted Hag cake, just floating.
Madeline Bach:
Totally.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I like that. Respect. That's really cool.
Madeline Bach:
Thank you.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I mean, reading on your website, and it seems like it's more than cake to you, or cake really has a lot of symbolism and meaning to you. You mentioned that without cake, your life would be a mess. Why is that something that you believe as a mantra?
Madeline Bach:
It's so special to me to have learned... I don't want to say I figured everything out, but to figure out this craft on my own, and spend so much time with myself and put so much of myself into it. I feel like if I didn't have the lessons that I've learned from running this business by myself and from messing things up, or just figuring out every end of it, photographing things, cleaning my kitchen top to bottom, we're learning how to work in my kitchen with a roommate, God bless her, I think that structure is just so important for me and gives me so much purpose. I literally don't know what else I would do.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. Wow, that's really special. What do you think is the importance of cake in society? I mean, we think of, there's so many instances of cake. The famous butchered Marie Antoinette line, the concept of birthday cake as a flavor, as a substance, like we've had the cake pop revolution. We've just had so many instances of cake after this.
Madeline Bach:
There's so much cake.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, for Cake World. Yeah.
Madeline Bach:
Seriously. I think everyone's thinking about cake in some way or another that's very different from before. I mean, I am someone I kind of dread my birthday. It gets worse and worse each year.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Really?
Madeline Bach:
I get over it, but the week leading off to it I'm like, "Ugh."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Irony of being a cake artist and not liking your birthday.
Madeline Bach:
I know. What's wrong with me?
I know everyone has a different relationship to it, a different association with it. I think people take it maybe less seriously now, and I think they appreciate just seeing this object that's always been familiar, taken to a different level, and pushed in a certain way, and then being used in a certain way. Or, just like you can have a horrible day and someone just brings you a little cake and it's not a big deal, or you can have a giant celebration and you can think about the way that you want to present a cake differently versus just something that's super traditional. And then if you want to do traditional, that's amazing too. There's so many different ways to enjoy a cake. It symbolizes a real concentrated effort for someone or something and just showcases real true love and personality.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Has there been a fun order you've worked on recently?
Madeline Bach:
I just did a collaboration with MAC Cosmetics, which was-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow, very cool.
Madeline Bach:
Yeah, that was huge. I would cry and beg my mom to take me to the mall all the time. MAC this, MAC that, always on my Christmas list. So, that was really a dream collab, and they sent me 10 lipsticks from their new collection.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Nice.
Madeline Bach:
So, I matched each shade with my Swiss meringue buttercream, and then made a cake based on the lipsticks.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow, very cool.
Madeline Bach:
I stuck one of the lipsticks in the top.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Great cake topper, easy cake topper.
You worked in Chinatown when you got out of college. You worked in the bakery, but you always had this passion for art. So, you were working in a Chinatown gallery when you started Frosted Hag. Actually, I think I met you at the time when you were still doing the both of them.
Madeline Bach:
Yeah.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Was there anything helpful from your life as a gallerina, which is a term I noticed in an interview that you brought up, which I was like, "I love this", that you think helped with being a cake artist?
Madeline Bach:
Honestly, at the time, I was always complaining, because I would wake up super early, bake my cake layers, go to work, then come home and finish a cake. That was a lot, but looking back actually, that structure was so important for me to get a hold on what I was doing with cakes. Now that I'm not there, it's great because I have so much time to work on everything, but I think that my time management is going to be a little-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Better.
Madeline Bach:
Yeah.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
We love that. We love that growth. What sparked the decision to move into Frosted Hag full-time?
Madeline Bach:
Well, my boss that I was working with at the gallery, he passed away suddenly last May.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh, I'm really sorry for your loss.
Madeline Bach:
Thank you. Yeah. So, he was always super, just so excited about my baking. He taught me so much about how to do literally everything and was just such a wonderful, exciting, hardworking person. When that chapter closed, I felt like there was really... I was like, "You know what? It's the time I got to dive into it, take it slow, figure it out as it comes", but it felt obviously very, very bittersweet. But it did feel like, "Okay, we're doing it."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Maybe this is the way that you honor him and honor his legacy.
Madeline Bach:
Yeah, definitely.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. That's really beautiful.
You've been in it now almost four months, what has been the most rewarding and challenging part of navigating this new chapter, fully committed to the hag life?
Madeline Bach:
The hag of it all.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Good one.
Madeline Bach:
It's been nice. I'm just seeing how it goes. I'm really grateful to have so much more time to get into everything. I'm grateful to have so much more time to myself. I have so much more time to document things, which was always such a scram. Definitely, it's teaching me how to manage my time best in my own way. And then it's also teaching me that four months in full time, I'm grateful that I'm able to survive off of it. I can support myself right now. I don't need to be zero to a 100. I can actually just keep it where I am, and keep moving and keep being present in what I'm doing and not be so, "What is everyone else doing? How is everyone else building everything and..."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
What's something that's been a little bit more challenging you think in this period?
Madeline Bach:
More challenging, kind of be the same as what's rewarding, which would be managing time. It's different. It's a lot of time with myself, which is great, but then sometimes it's strange. And then also surviving is tough, and just managing a schedule that has a lot of last minute curveballs. Then there's other side gigs that come in, and I have to juggle that.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
When you think about your relationship to Instagram, what have been the feelings and things that you've been processing now that you're fully committed to it being online?
Madeline Bach:
Well, first and foremost, hackers are terrifying. Frosted Hag is safe.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh, no, you were hacked.
Madeline Bach:
I was hacked.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
What?
Madeline Bach:
Yeah, but it's-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. I'm so sorry.
Madeline Bach:
Thank you. It's okay, but I would say that's definitely... I'm like, the internet is so scary and there are scary people, and we have to protect our accounts.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yes, the 2FA.
Madeline Bach:
So, that's definitely top of my list with that. Outside of that, I think it can be really tricky when you have something that you're putting your soul into, and that it's creative, and then you're monetizing it, and then it becomes business. And then you also see so much else of that, and it can be really stifling.
And then it's like this whole pageantry kind of just you get sucked in, and it's hard to separate that from what you actually are doing, or it's hard to not let it affect your value in some way, because it's just we're so over-saturated with what everyone else is doing, and I love seeing what everyone's doing. It's amazing, keep doing it, but it is just the way that the app is designed and the way that our brains are designed to look at it is we're just like, "We need to keep consuming all of this, or we miss something." And then that takes away from, I could be standing up and making a reel right now, or just literally making frosting, but I just spent 20 minutes doomscrolling. I don't think anyone is really immune to that. I think that comes in phases for people, and I think it's important to recognize what comes up for you when you do feel this just gut anxiety of looking at so much stuff. I don't know if I have any advice on how to fix that.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
If you could, let's say, have a chat with someone at Instagram, what do you think the future holds for businesses like yourself that are really using Instagram to showcase and share their work?
Madeline Bach:
I mean, I feel like the algorithm's a little weird, but I don't know what-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Big algo. Yeah.
Madeline Bach:
I don't know what they're going to do about that. I guess, for businesses I want to see... I think this is generally how it goes, I think there's just so much other strange energy of the internet that is always filtered into things, but I think just really using it as a platform to bring people together in food settings and to make spaces accessible for people to have these experiences without so much noise.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
You're in this really interesting part of the business and you have such great references to art and all these other things, how do you stay inspired or keep your creative flame going?
Madeline Bach:
I'm always going to art shows. A lot of my friends are artists. That helps, definitely. I love looking at medieval art. I love going to The Cloisters.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Nice.
Madeline Bach:
I love looking at fences and just finding strange, curvy, swirly patterns, and things, and taking logs of them and using them as inspiration. I love fountains. Just whatever's outside, I feel like I can find a cake in it if I look.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow, that's really cool. Do you think about the world in that way when you're walking like, "Can I cake that?"
Madeline Bach:
I do. Yeah. Sometimes I have to just be like, "You got to stop, girl. We're walking."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Just get to the grocery store.
Madeline Bach:
Yeah. Truly. I'm huge into music and I'm always playing whatever music is resonating with me at the time whenever I'm baking, and I feel like that gives each cake its own rhythm.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Who are three artists that you listen to consistently when you're decorating?
Madeline Bach:
Depeche Mode, 60,000 minutes this year on Spotify.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
0.001% fan.
Madeline Bach:
Yeah.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
60,000? Wow.
Madeline Bach:
60,000 minutes.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Just Depeche Mode?
Madeline Bach:
I have a screenshot of just them. They're always my number one. I'm like, "Girl, I need to chill."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's amazing. And I felt bad listening to 30,000. Wow.
Madeline Bach:
Oh, no, don't feel bad. No, it gets crazy.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's amazing. Wow. That's so cool.
Madeline Bach:
Definitely Depeche Mode, PinkPantheress, and Lana.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Well, will you like to make a cake for all of these three iconic artists?
Madeline Bach:
I would make a cake for Lana. I feel like that I can-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, that tracks. That's it.
Madeline Bach:
That's it. It's fine if I just do that.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. PinkPantheress, that would be a pretty cool cake too.
Madeline Bach:
I Know. I would love that.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, that would be very whimsical.
Madeline Bach:
There's so many people, but Lana and PinkPantheress. I feel like Depeche... I don't know if they need a cake. I don't know. They're busy.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
We're huge manifesters on the podcast, so we have just said those two-
Madeline Bach:
It's manifesting. I feel it in here.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yes. Yes. It's happening.
One of my favorite questions I think a lot of people ask founders is like, what's the one thing you wish you knew about your job before going into it? I'm really curious to hear, as you've been running the small business, seeing other friends in the industry, what's one thing you wish more people knew about building a business like this for yourself?
Madeline Bach:
It's cute. You see a silly extravagant cake on your feed, and you meet me and I'm like, "Haha", but I think a lot of people just don't realize how crazy it is to do that many dishes with no dishwasher, and then to go climb out of my window on my fire escape and set up a whole photo set up with lights. I'm not complaining, I love it, but I think there's so much that goes into it that people don't see, because you're seeing the best side of it. You're seeing the final outcome on Instagram, and then you're seeing who's behind it. And I'm like, "I just made a cake, whatever", but I think having a better understanding of how intense and sometimes agonizing it can be to put all of that out there yourself and clean everything.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. It seems like you are really good about enjoying your process just based on how you talk about it, the music, just letting the cake kind of vibe.
Madeline Bach:
It's fun. Yeah.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
When you're not working on cakes, how do you find time to decompress and take care of yourself?
Madeline Bach:
Well, I'm a Taurus moon and a Taurus rising, so I'm always decompressing. If I'm not working, I'm decompressing.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Just always on a vibe. I love that.
Madeline Bach:
It's just instant, but I love being outside. My apartment doesn't have a ton of light, which is fine, I don't care, but I go outside a lot. I like to bike a lot and just-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Very cool. You got a Citi Bike membership?
Madeline Bach:
No. Well, I have a really rusty bike I have to fix up, but I should just get a Citi Bike membership. I don't know
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh. It's the best. It gets you where you need to go. And I do like the Turbo bikes, they're fun.
Madeline Bach:
They're amazing.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. Get you across that Manhattan Bridge.
What-
Madeline Bach:
They do.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah.
Working for yourself and working alone, how have you found community with other New York City food folks and creatives?
Madeline Bach:
A lot through Cherry Bombe, a lot through Instagram, one of our many blessings. And then just through friends of friends. I've lived downtown for three and a half years now, so I feel like I'm always bopping around and meeting people. And there's always new restaurants coming out, there's such a big community of that. I try to surround myself with people that do those things and people that don't.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Any person or creative that you would love to collaborate on a project with or on a cake With?
Madeline Bach:
Lana.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yes. Does she live downtown?
Madeline Bach:
No. I don't know where she is, but I would want to do... Actually, I was just thinking about doing more videos, and what I can do with videos, and how fun it would be to dress up, because fashion is one of my first loves. I think a lot of my cakes could go... They could fit in with some fashion moments and just to do more collaborations with brands like, "Send me a crazy outfit, I'll make a cake in it. The cake will look like whatever you want it to look like, and we'll make a video from there."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
What's one piece of advice that you've received on starting the business, and what's one piece of advice you would give to someone who's listening and thinking about wanting to start their own cake business one day?
Madeline Bach:
Some of the best advice I got in was definitely from my mom where I was having a meltdown.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Life was lifing.
Madeline Bach:
She was just like, "It takes so long, so much time, so much effort, so much everything to build something like what you're doing at the scale that you are expecting it to be at overnight. You have to sit with that, and you have to just trust it, and let it go and keep doing what you're doing. Life is long. There's no limit. There's no age limit for me to stop making cakes." So I think once that clicked, that took a lot of pressure off of me and allowed me to really just get back into it and enjoy things more.
For anyone starting something like this, I would say start slow. Be ready to spend a lot of time, a lot of deep, serious time with yourself and what you want to put out in the world. Do it.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's the biggest one.
Madeline Bach:
And you'll figure it out.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. When you think about the future of the Frosted Hag empire, will it be just cake or will there be more things on the horizon?
Madeline Bach:
Empire? I want to do workshops. I think that's next in line, definitely.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Love that.
Madeline Bach:
I want to do more videos, like I said, and then maybe branch off into different kind of cooking, if that feels right. I've just been making rice and beans every night, so I'm not really ready to put that out yet, but we'll get there.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Hey, you can really mix that up. Yeah, no pressure.
Madeline Bach:
Yeah, so just collaborations. I would love to have a studio space that just operates where I can draw in there, have my work in there, bake in there, have a kitchen, host workshops in there, have clients come in and do one-on-one consultations and just have-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
So cool.
Madeline Bach:
I am like, "Please, where's the space?" It will come.
I'm going to do show in Los Angeles in October at my friend's gallery.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Very cool. Which-
Madeline Bach:
Yeah, it's called Giovanni's Room, and we're going to have real cake.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Nice.
Madeline Bach:
We're going to have fake cake. We're going to have cake drawings. It's going to be something.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Could you describe one of the last cakes that you made and how you work with the client to bring it all together?
Madeline Bach:
So, I recently did a Kuromi-inspired cake, which is an anime character that I just learned about. Their colors are black, pink, and white, so I made a four-tier cake using black rock candy to mimic the ears, not to make it exactly the shape of the character. It's an Earl Grey sponge with hazelnut, cardamom, mascarpone filling and pistachio Swiss meringue buttercream. There's also thistle on it, rock candy, purple statice flowers, amaranth buds.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
What was the client hoping for with this cake?
Madeline Bach:
She really just wanted to surprise her partner with the Kuromi theme-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's cute. That's amazing.
Madeline Bach:
... which people are really, really into Kuromi, I learned.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh.
Madeline Bach:
I was making it, and then my roommate was like, "What are those colors?" And then she comes out with a stuffed animal and all these books, and I was like, "This was all in your room?"
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow. You're like, "I've been living with a Kuromi's fan this whole time?"
Madeline Bach:
I know. I'm like, "What else don't I know about you?", but-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Full of surprises.
Madeline Bach:
Yeah. So, that was really fun. There's a frog cake also.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh.
Madeline Bach:
That was a fun one. Frog cake. The one and only frog cake I've done. I'm open to more if anyone wants one. I had a lot of fun with this. A friend of mine got it for his friend, who loves frogs. It is a chocolate sponge with hazelnut cream filling and pistachio Swiss meringue buttercream.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow. So, like rocks, mossy.
Madeline Bach:
Yeah, very mossy. And then I have fake lily pads on it. You got to pick some things off, but that's part of the fun of it. You got to really get into it. There's frog candles on it. There's sugar butterflies. I should bring those back. I haven't used them in a while. There is glitter cherries on this one as well.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
How do you make a glitter cherry? You Just dip a cherry in glitter?
Madeline Bach:
You do.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh, nice. Pretty cool. Pretty straightforward.
Madeline Bach:
It's crazy, I get the green maraschino cherries.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Very cool.
Madeline Bach:
Yeah, they always send me. And then just I spray edible glitter on them.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Nice. Really cool.
Madeline Bach:
Each cake kind of comes with its own lipstick palette, because the food coloring will get on you, but, again, it's all part of it.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
If we want to continue to support you, where are the best places we can find you?
Madeline Bach:
Instagram.com/frostedhag or you can order on my website, www.frostedhag.com, or if you just want to say hello, you can email me at frostedhag@gmail.com.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Amazing.
Madeline Bach:
I'm taking custom commissions for all occasions with a week's notice, maybe two.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Amazing.
Madeline Bach:
Thank you.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Before we go, our guest is going to leave a voicemail just talking to themselves 10 years from now.
You have reached The Future Of Food Is You mailbox. Please leave your message after the beep.
Madeline Bach:
Hey, Madeline. First off, you better have your driver's license. Let's get serious. I hope you're living in gorgeous natural light. I hope you have a dishwasher. I hope your screen time is much, much lower, but most importantly, I hope you're healthy and more than happy with yourself and the growth you've achieved, and continue to share with the people that you love, who love you. And thank you for your patience, kindness, company and constructive criticism during the ups and downs of the journey of life, which I hope you are now driving through. I know that Frosted Hag has taken you far and wide, and you're in the space you've always dreamed of, making cakes you've always dreamed of. I know you're probably tired and scared for whatever comes next, but know that I'm so proud of you.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's it for today's show. I would love for you to leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to our show. The Future Of Food Is You is a production of the Cherry Bombe podcast. Thanks to the team at CityVox Studios, executive producers Kerry Diamond and Catherine Baker, associate producers, Jenna Sadhu and Elizabeth Poett, and content operations manager Londyn Crenshaw. Catch you on the future flip.