Artsy cakes and cake shops are in great demand. Is that because their visual appearance makes us dream these days? Will we be bringing cakes instead of flowers when visiting friends and is baking cake becoming a new art form? IRMA wonders and chats with Alexa von Harder, a pâtissiers in Munich who creates beautiful, deliciously tasting cakes and more.
IRMA: How did you start your business, which concepts makes you different from others?
ALEXA VON HARDER: We opened the shop two years ago and wanted to create a unique experience for our customers.
Our vision is to work as “food artists” and to design every single product handmade individually.
IRMA: A visually opulent cake on a table is immediate the talk of a tea or lunch/dinner party. How do you go about creating visually entertaining statement cakes?
ALEXA VON HARDER: When designing the cakes, we are inspired individually by our customers and their wishes and try to complete this with our handwriting.
When we create designs for our cake selections, we take our inspiration from fashion or design trends ourselves.
IRMA: Tell us something about the ingredients you used for the IRMA cake and your cakes in general ?
ALEXA VON HARDER: We always use high quality and fresh ingredients. For your Irmasworld cake we chose our most wanted flavour: Raspberry – cheesecake.
This contains: White chocolate biscuit soaked with fresh raspberry juice, Philadelphia cream cheese frosting, raspberry compote and raspberry cream.
IRMA: How can you send a massage with a cake; can you give us an example of a creative project you recently did?
ALEXA VON HARDER: For example, the design “Fleur” from our cake collection (IRMA’s cake has a black flower) was created in the beginning of the pandemic.
We wanted to give our customers the feeling of spring, happiness and positive energy.
IRMA: How important is colour when creating a cake?
ALEXA VON HARDER: The colour is one of the most important detail of a cake. Each colour makes a cake look different and we always try to use pastel colours.
IRMA: What comes first the cake and then the decoration or the other way around?
ALEXA VON HARDER: This depends on the situation. Especially for weddings we design the cake first. For our daily business when customers for example choose our surprise cake we are designing instantly, in that moment.
IRMA: Cakes and cookie, Cake pops, etc, what is next? Do you see a tendency coming?
ALEXA VON HARDER: Different shapes of cakes instead of round ones.
