Whenever I meet someone who’s got a really cool job, who runs a thriving business, or who has completed an amazing project, I always want to know: “How did you do that?”
I’m always curious to hear the “behind-the-scenes story” — who they emailed, what they said, how they got their first client, how they got their foot in the door — the exact steps that they took to achieve their goal.
HOW DID YOU DO THAT? is an interview series where we get to hear the REAL story behind someone’s success—not the polished, neat and tidy version.
To see a complete list of all the interviews that have been completed to date, head over here.
Name: Natalie and Dave Sideserf
Location: Austin, Texas
Profession: Cake sculptors
Cake artist Natalie Sideserf is based in Austin Texas. She works with her husband, Dave Sideserf at their bakery, Sideserf Cake Studio, where they make some of the most intricate cake sculptures in the world. I serendipitously came upon an article about them and their amazing creations, and I knew I just had to interview them. They did not disappoint.
There are thousands of bakers and bakeries in the world, but you two have developed a very interesting twist on the whole thing. Severed heads, anatomical horrors. Did you wake up one day and say, “I want to make a cake of a unicorn farting a rainbow” ? Tell us how you got started and how your career evolved.
I was an art major in college, with a concentration in painting. After I graduated, a friend of mine mentioned that she had seen a bunch of TV shows where people were making these crazy cakes. She told me to try it and I did! So we made a cow skull cake. She helped me, but it was pretty much me just trying to dive in and see what I could do, having no prior experience working with cake. I immediately felt drawn using cake artistry as a way to create.
What drew you to making these very quirky cakes?
I am drawn to the aspect of pop culture that’s a little bit off or that some people may call strange. Dave’s always been into horror movies. That’s where our severed head wedding cake came from. Our work is a combination of making other people happy by baking these interesting cakes and then also a little bit of me just finding these different creations fascinating.
As I started putting out cakes that I thought were interesting, I started getting orders that were unique. The customers were actually placing orders for these hypre-realistic cakes (for example someone ordered the unicorn farting a rainbow!), which was nice, because then I got to make it!
Austin, Texas is a perfect place for us to live to because the moniker here is to keep Austin weird. So hopefully we’re doing that.
When your friend said “Oh, I saw this on TV, you should try it,” was there something that just appealed to you and struck a little chord? Were you a baker?
I wasn’t a baker. But I was so used to trying out different art media, I already had the experience of teaching myself how to do things. You have to get your hands on it and you have to figure it out. So whether I’m using plaster, clay or wire, I’m sculpting with found materials. I just treated it like that. Now I’m sculpting with food. It just felt so comfortable to just experiment with cake and see what I could do with it.
I love that you just went for it. Were there other people in the field doing this or did you just start this new art form?
It’s a little hard to say. One of my very first sculpted cakes was a replica of Willie Nelson, that I made for a cake competition. And when I made that, I really had no idea what I was doing. I learned while I was working on it. In typical artist fashion, I researched other people in the field to see what they were doing. Not surprisingly I couldn’t find any bust cakes at the time. So I decided to just go for it. I studied traditional busts in clay because referencing images in other mediums is really important. Then I had to figure out how to do it with chocolate and cake. I don’t know if I was the first one to ever make cakes like this, but it really wasn’t out there when I started.
We also started calling ourselves Sideserf Cake Studio, because we wanted to delineate between a traditional bakery and what we do, which is a little bit more of an artistic angle. And at that time, when we were coming up with the name, we couldn’t find any other cake studios, or dessert studios. But now cake studios are pretty common.
Are there other people making these very realistic cakes and sculpting? Has this become a thing?
Each year more and more people seem to be getting inspired. People reach out to me all the time saying, “Wow, I had no idea that you could do this with cake,” and that I inspire them to try to get more involved in this art form. That said, there aren’t as many as I think there will be in another 10 years.
Interestingly, we are seeing the crossover from special effects makeup artists over to cake. You can airbrush a food color. That’s a big deal in special effects. The whole gore aspect translates really well.
How did people start to find you? How long were you struggling until you started getting steady business?
In 2012, after I started Sideserf Cake Studio, the Willie Nelson cake went viral. My brother, who lives in Tokyo, posted an image on Reddit. And then once it went viral, I thought “Okay I think I’m onto something. People really are interested in this. So if this cake circled the world and people are reaching out to me, I’ve got something that I can do.” So that was when I started the business. But it was a slow process. It wasn’t like all of a sudden one day everybody came knocking at our door.
How long does it typically take for you to make a cake from start to finish?
Every cake is different, so while some things are similar throughout each creation, they’re all originals.
I’ve found so many different ways of saving time. Dave was a software developer before he quit to join the business, and we really approach the process much like software development. There are phases. There’s a sales phase, then there’s a design phase, and then a build phase, and then there’s a finishing touches kind of phase. We really break it down and we kind of go back and forth. We have all these systems that we use and we task things out to each other that are all related to a particular order. I give myself a window of time to keep the cake fresh, so it’s probably about three days before delivery where I just have to work really, really hard, long hours to get the cake done.
You do a show for the Food Network called ‘The Texas Cake House’. Is that an ongoing program?
There was two seasons. Right now, we don’t have plans to do more, but we do have other filming projects in the works.
We also do YouTube videos that show how we go through each stage of our process. People can’t really wrap their heads around how these cakes are made, so putting out YouTube videos and doing shows on TV answers those questions. People really seem to like it.
The YouTube videos are based on actual orders. They educate and also serve as great advertisements. People can buy their cake and then they can see it being made after it’s delivered. The person that ordered the Wolverine cake can has a permanent keepsake.
Life is filled with ups and downs and starting a creative business can be overwhelming. When you look back over the last 10 years, what was one of your most discouraging experiences? What happened and how did you get through it?
There are moments that are obviously much harder than others, and since we’re husband and wife, I think that there’s honesty and a relationship that most business partners don’t have. Whether that’s good or bad, depends. We almost always agree but when we don’t, trying to work through that is kind of tough.
Dave had a really great job. He was a director at a software company and when he quit, we realized that we had to go all in with the cake business. And that was when the Food Network show started, and that transition was just pretty wild. It was scary because it was quite a leap.
It was like being on the edge of a diving board and then jumping into the pool without really knowing whether there was water in it.
Who are your heroes? Who do you really admire?
Trey Parker, Matt Stone, the guys that made South Park. Mike Judge, the guy that made Office Space and Beavis and Butthead and Silicon Valley. We love their outlandish style, of course, but what’s best about those guys is they just do what they know works.
I also like to look up special effects makeup artists. I’ve always liked Ron Mueck. When I was in college, I saw Evan Penny had a series that was going in the local art museum. When I saw his hyper-realtistic work on these really large-scale, faces, I found them so interesting.
Let’s say somebody really wants to have an unconventional career like you do, but they feel that there’s no possible way to make a living doing something that they love. What are three pieces of advice or words of encouragement you would give them?
1. Surround yourself with positive people who are taking chances. It is awesome to bounce ideas back and forth, Whether they’re having successful moments or hard times, it’s great to have that conversation and know that you’re all in the same boat.
2. Feel the fear and do it anyway. You will always find yourself in uncomfortable situations, but remember it gets more comfortable the more you do it.
3. Don’t let the day to day of running the business ever stop you from working on your art and your passions. Always remember why you started doing your work in the first place. That will get you through the hard moments.
Sideserf Cake Studio is also the focal point of the series Texas Cake House on Food Network. For more information about the series and to get an inside look at some of Natalie and Dave’s killer creations, visit Food Network.
ONE MORE THING…
Do you have “one more quick question” that you’d like to ask Natalie and Dave? Email me and tell me what you want to know! I might choose your question for my ONE MORE THING… Podcast (Coming soon!!!)
YOUR #1 CAREER GOAL: ACHIEVED
Do you need some encouragement to help you achieve a big, daunting career goal? Would you like to have a career coach/strategist in your corner—feeding you ideas that you’d never considered before, helping you figure out who to contact, and what to say, and checking in to make sure you don’t procrastinate? If so… click here to find out how we can work together. I’d love to coach you!
