The Celebrity Cake Studio is leaving its longtime home at Freighthouse Square, but fans of the neighborhood bakery known for elaborate wedding cakes and fondant party cakes need only travel a few blocks to its new location at 314 E. 26th St.
Bakery owner Odette D’Aniello said she’ll keep her Freighthouse Square shop at 602 E. 25th St. open during the transition, but expect to see the move happen near the end of November to the beginning of December.
D’Aniello will continue to offer a bakery display case with a daily selection of cookies and other sweet treats, but special-order cakes will be the bulk of the business. While she’s preparing to move her bakery, D’Aniello is working on another project that should catch the attention of mobile food fans: D’Aniello has created a Cake Mobile.
She plans to take the cake truck to public events and festivals, and she’ll also park it at her building near the Tacoma Dome to sell cake before and after concerts and Dome events.
When I first spoke with D’Aniello about the truck early in the summer, she said she was thinking of opening a bakery out of town, but the uneven economy had her feeling uneasy about that move.
“That’s when I decided to buy an ice cream truck that we could use to sell cakes,” D’Aniello wrote in an email. “We could drive the truck to different locations without committing to a lease. If the idea didn’t work, we’d make it into a delivery truck. It was really a way to mitigate the risk of expansion. The idea evolved, and my family – who operates Celebrity Cake Studio with me – was very excited about it. We found the truck in Puyallup and bought it from a used car salesman named Bubba. He called it the ‘dumb and dumber’ truck. I thought it was perfect. We paid for it and drove it away.”
A few months later, the truck is tricked out, painted pretty shades of lavender (but not too girly, D’Aniello says) and ready to deliver and sell cake out of the window she had installed. She won’t actually bake on the truck – that’s what her stand-alone bakery near the Tacoma Dome is for – but her plan is to bring sweet treats to all parts of the city. D’Aniello already has started a Facebook page for the Cake Mobile.
D’Aniello has a long history of cake decorating here – she’s operated Celebrity Cake Studio since 2004. Before buying the Tacoma bakery, she owned Celebrity Cakes in Lacey, which she opened in 1999. She bought the Freighthouse bakery called Cake Studio after the owner passed away and decided to merge the two bakery names into the Celebrity Cake Studio.
D’Aniello’s lifelong work in bakeries started when she was in grade school working in the family bakery in Guam.
“Me and my cousins were the bread slicers. We had to wear our Catholic school uniforms and slice bread, and I would go to the cake decorating room because it was air conditioned and I taught myself to decorate cakes. ... I got into trouble because I would sneak in and learn to write with the icing. Then they figured out I was the fastest cake decorator, so they moved me there” to be one of the cake decorators, D’Aniello said in a phone interview.
College called and she attended the University of Arizona. After earning her teaching degree, she returned to Guam, where she met her husband, a Connecticut native who was teaching there. After five years, D’Aniello decided to give up teaching and return to cake decorating. Eventually, the couple followed a family member who moved here and made their home in Lacey. The rest is cake history.
Sue Kidd: 253-597-8270
Sue.kidd@thenewstribune.com
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