Let them eat cake

Call her the ace of cakes. The queen of confections.

The pastry professional.

For Nancy Rozo Cantu, no baking challenge is too hard and no cake too complicated.

Since opening her own bakery in July, the 24-year-old Donna resident has earned a reputation for creating and decorating whimsical, three-dimensional cakes that are as pleasing to the palate as they are structurally puzzling on the plate.

Customers flock to Honey’s Cakes and Pastries in Weslaco hoping she will take on the challenges that others shake in their aprons about.

“Honestly, there’s a lot of geometry and angles to cake making,” Cantu said. “But whatever it looks like, it’s got to taste good.”

Her secret ingredients?

A dash of humor and a never-say-never attitude.

The pages of her baking portfolio are filled with colorful creations that seem to defy gravity.

From cakes shaped like beer kegs and bottles of Crown Royal, to a 3-D red snapper complete with frosted-on scales, Cantu lets her customers’ imaginations set her boundaries.

The road from baker to business owner hasn’t always been lined with gumdrops and lollipops, though.

Cantu learned to bake while growing up in the kitchen with her four older sisters. While they stuck to more traditional confections, she experimented with cake carving and airbrushing techniques.

At South Texas College, where she earned a culinary arts associate’s degree, Cantu was the lone pastry chef among peers more comfortable frying a catfish than frosting a cake.

But while working at an Alamo bakery, Cantu found that she never had the time or the liberty to let her imagination run wild.

“I always wanted to spend hours on one cake,” she said. “But then I’d end up having to do five cakes in one hour.”

She spent much of her free time experimenting in her cramped home kitchen, until she and her husband decided to set out on their own.

The couple rented, gutted and renovated a former sports bar on Business 83 in Weslaco and opened the bake shop in a matter of weeks. Now, where beer-drinking pool sharks once gathered, Cantu plots each new creation.

Last week, she puzzled over her next challenge — a cake shaped like a Tonka truck — while idly wrapping individual slices of strawberry cheesecake.

The text style of the truck’s logo posed the toughest challenge.

“A 2-year-old will know when it’s not exactly right,” she said.

“But if I get it, he’s going to remember that party where he had that one great cake.”

———

Jeremy Roebuck covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4437.