Claire Ptak

Claire Ptak in 2012

Claire Ptak is an American baker, pastry chef and food writer.[1] She owns and runs a bakery-café, Violet Cakes, in London's East End and also has a stall at the Broadway Market.[2] She baked the wedding cake for the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle – a layered sponge flavoured with lemon and elderflower.[2]

Early life

Ptak grew up in Inverness, California, where she learnt cookery from her mother and grandmother.[3] She baked a cake for a friend's wedding when she was just seventeen and worked at local bakers, Bovine Bakery and Cake Art.[4][5] She studied film at Mills College but became a pastry chef at Chez Panisse where she was mentored by Alice Waters for three years.[3] She then moved to London in 2005 to be with Damien Thomas who she married. In London, she became a food stylist for celebrity chefs such as Yotam Ottolenghi and Nigella Lawson while running a stall at the Broadway Market, selling cakes and pies made at home with fresh buttercream flavoured with seasonal fruits.[6] She opened Violet Cakes in a derelict building in Hackney in 2010, expanding there to move the business out of her home. Initially, she planned to just use it for cooking and baking but local enthusiasm encouraged her to open it as a shop and café too.[7][3] Famous customers include the chef, Jamie Oliver, who praised her cakes.[7]

Royal wedding cake

Megan Markle's discovery of The Violet Bakery Cookbook led to an interview and then the wedding cake commission.[3]

Violet Cakes was commissioned to bake the cake for the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle since Markle had read Ptak's book, The Violet Bakery Cookbook, and then interviewed her for her lifestyle blog, The Tig.[4][3] Ptak brought six different samples to Kensington Palace for the couple to taste and they selected the Amalfi lemon and elderflower flavour; an unconventional choice which was Ptak's own favourite.[4]

Six staff at Violet Cakes worked on the cake and it took five days with the final touches such as fresh flowers being added during the ceremony and up to an hour before the guests were served.[4] Many of the ingredients, such as the elderflower syrup, were sourced from the Queen's estate at Sandringham House.[3] As well as the display cake, which had several elaborate tiers, an additional cake was made to cater for the 650 wedding guests and everything was eaten.[4]

Writing

Ptak has written several cookery books and her works include:[8]

  • The Whoopie Pie Book (2012)
  • Leon: Baking & Puddings (2013)
  • Boiled Sweets and Hard Candy (2013)
  • Home-Made Chocolates and Truffles (2014)
  • The Old-Fashioned Hand-Made Sweet Shop Recipes Book (2015)
  • The Violet Bakery Cookbook (2015)

See also

References

  1. ↑ Menta, Anna (2018-03-20). "Meet Claire Ptak, the London baker making Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding cake". Newsweek. Retrieved 2018-07-19.
  2. 1 2 Sabrina Barr (19 May 2018), "Royal wedding cake: Claire Ptak's lemon and elderflower creation revealed by Kensington Palace", The Independent
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Osman Ahmed (19 May 2018), "Breaking Tradition: How East London's Claire Ptak Came To Make The Royal Wedding Cake", Vogue
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Adam Coghlan (24 May 2018), "This Is the Story of How Hackney Baker Claire Ptak Made the Royal Wedding Cake", Eater
  5. ↑ Vicki Larson (10 October 2015), "Sweet turn of events for West Marin native Claire Ptak", Marin Independent Journal
  6. ↑ Aoife Carrigy (8 May 2016), "Ptak's purple Reign - Meet London's hippest cake maker", The Independent
  7. 1 2 Violet Bakery owner Claire Ptak's first love of baking, CBS, 26 September 2015
  8. ↑ "Ptak, Claire", Virtual International Authority File, OCLC
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