On Amelia Alemán’s cakes, flowers stretch skyward from a buttercream base, their random, varying heights mimicking the natural world. The sides of the cake, thick with frosting, are plied with similar foliage, along with swirls of soft-hued buttercream that crest like waves. Random arrangements of exotic fruit round out the pastry’s inviting surface, giving it a look that falls somewhere between arboretum and fancy hat.
No surprise then, Alemán’s LSU-themed cakes diverge from Crayola purple and yellow and Tiger cartoons. Instead they favor an explosion of flowers, icing whorls and fresh and candied fruit.
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“I like to use flavors like fresh peach and blueberry,” Alemán says about a cake for an LSU grad. Between the layers, she piped Honduran cajeta (goat milk caramel), and iced the cake with Chantilly cream. In a cake with lavender and orange icing, she infused the batter with Earl Grey tea and lavender. Showered with flowers she says remind her of the LSU Quad in the spring, the designs are a subtle study in school spirit.
Alemán, 26, was inspired to start baking after studying abroad with LSU in Paris in 2019. During a class at a French pastry school, she took part in a baking demonstration. An interior design major, Alemán says it awakened a passion that showed her baking’s tidy fusion of art and science.
The El Salvador native draws on her family’s culinary heritage, as well. Growing up, she’d watch her grandmother prepare sweet cornbread over an open fire hearth with no temperature gauge. During the pandemic, Alemán baked constantly, perfecting French tartes aux pommes (apple tarts), croissants, macarons, cakes and other pastries.
These days, Alemán works full time in event planning and bakes on weekends. She fills orders for specialty cakes and pastry boxes stuffed with rotating patisserie. Customers can pick up weekly boxes at Everbowl in the Village at Willow Grove.
She plans to go to culinary school, and her dream is to study pastry in France. In the meantime, she’s exercising her creativity in Baton Rouge, concocting unexpected flavor combinations for clients.
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“I wouldn’t make a cake that you’d find in a bakery,” she says. “I don’t like to do the same thing over and over.” Find her on Instagram at @ameliaa_aleman
This article was originally published in the 2023 Tiger Pride issue of 225 magazine.