CityView Magazine

Mandy Campbell T his diva knows how to mix things up — cake batter and meticulously decorated cakes, that is. Mandy Campbell is the owner and mastermind be- hind her business, Extreme Cakes. The skills of this local cake baker and decorator speak for themselves. Mandy recently returned from the Food Network's audition for "Halloween Wars, Season Two" and also competed for a spot on season two of TLC's "Next Great Baker". Last spring, Extreme Cakes was selected by the Smithso- nian National Museum of Natural History to make a replica cake of their building to commemorate the museum's 100th anniversary. The cake had to feed at least 500 people, and be at least 5 feet long. Its final dimensions ended up being 6 feet long and 3 feet high. "Knowing now what I didn't know then, I doubt I would M have attempted to do such a huge cake basically by myself," recalled Campbell. "That was the hardest I have ever worked in my life. It took a total three weeks to complete, working round the clock with short breaks for a nap here and there. The last four days of the actual construction of the cake I was awake for four days straight back to back. My mistake was that last night I sat down to put the details on to the front of the cake and fell asleep sitting up in a chair. I awoke to the driver of the van who was there to get the cake and deliver it to DC. I managed to get it all on there in a couple hours and then we drove 90 miles an hour the whole way to DC and made it in just under four hours. I ended up working on the cake the whole way there, right up until 10 minutes before the ceremony started. The fun part was watching five men get it out of the van and maneuver it up into the Smithsonian." Mandy is no stranger in the kitchen. A large part of her Acadian culture is cooking and creating many of the dishes that Louisiana is famous for. Louisiana Acadians are also known as Cajuns and descend from French settlers to the New World. While living with her Acadian family, Mandy learned to cook and her baking skills are primarily based on the knowledge that was imparted from her grandmother. She still creates most of her cake recipes based on taste, look, and consistency, rather than by measured ingredients. "An Acadian recipe goes something like this: a little of this, a lot of that, rather than a teaspoon or a cup," she quipped. Artists of any kind need inspiration and stamina while they create and plot the course — and Mandy's oſten comes from music. "Good old '80's music to start. Songs I've heard 1000s of times so they don't grab my attention, but they drown out the distractions of the outside world. Any one aspect of a cake can ruin its flow," she said. "This makes it extremely impor- tant for me to be able to actually visualize the way different design concepts incorporated with the client's preferences and colors, different shaped tiers, flowers, jewels, embossing, and any number of other elements will combine to create the effect that I am aiming for." Once the design process is complete, she moves into phase two: the creation of the cake, which can take days to do. For this she has to have her music on and loud. Some of her fa- vorite bands include: Audiovent, Rivas, Breaking Benjamin, Seether, Five Finger Death Punch, Skillet, Sevendust and Crossfade, all as loud as the speakers will go. Hurricane Katrina brought Mandy back to Fayetteville af- ter her house was destroyed by the disaster during her senior year at North Western State University in Louisiana. Previ- ously she had been stationed at Fort Bragg as a Combat Medic and had fallen in love with North Carolina. In the days aſter the hurricane she decided to move back here, turning her loss into our community's gain. A few months ago Mandy got the keys to her new storefront downtown across from Circa 1800, in the location of the old Cupcake Gallery. CityViewNC.com | 63

• Cover