Deliciously decadent designs

Katherine Sabbath knows just how easily everything she’s created could one day crumble away. 

The ex-teacher turned ‘cake creative’ admits her job is a tad “untraditional”.

“I love desserts, I love cooking and food, and I’ve kind of just worked my way into the cookbook world and the cake art world,” Sabbath told FW. 

“I teach classes, I collaborate with brands for fashion and accessories, and you might know me for making the world’s first pop-up cake art book.”

Here, Sabbath is being a touch modest. 

What she doesn’t say is that she’s a wildly successful dessert maestro. She’s also the author of three best-selling books, including her first self-published pop-up art book, Katherine Sabbath Greatest Hits, which has sold out its two print runs. 

Sabbath has appeared on Masterchef as a judge during “Sweet Week”, competed alongside other leading chefs on the recent “Dessert Masters” series and boasts almost half a million Instagram followers. She has even had some of her cakes immortalised as tattoos on the bodies of her most ardent fans. 

Image credits: Jeremy Simons and Kitchen Aid

But, despite all this success, Sabbath admits she still, at times, feels like an outsider in her profession. 

She has not, by any stretch of the imagination, had what one would describe as a standard career path for a pastry chef. 

Although she always loved cooking, Sabbath never looked at cakes and, as she put it, thought “that is going to be my creative expression”.

Instead the Sydney-sider started off as a history, geography and commerce high school teacher. Here, Sabbath used baking as a way to connect with her students – especially those hard-to-reach teenage boys. 

“I would make cakes to share with my students,” she said. “[And] they ended up being such big colourful, kind of sugary monstrosities, because I had a class of 30 Year Nine boys … students that I needed to engage and connect with on some level.”

“… People might look at that and be like, ‘Oh, she’s so innovative’. But I wasn’t trying to be, I just couldn’t afford anything else.”

In part Sabbath credits her unconventional career pathway – from commerce teacher to cakemaker extraordinaire – as helping to cultivate her creativity. 

“The benefit of not training to be a pastry chef and having that traditional background in food is that I’m not necessarily constrained by the traditional practices and the rules,” she said.

“So I might be able to think outside the square, use more new ingredients, try a different way of creating….cake food art.”

Resourcefulness and a hatred of waste are also key motivators behind Sabbath’s food art, which she often gifts to others. From early on, she began aiming for maximum impact on the lucky recipient, whilst minimising impact on the planet. 

“I was very conscious of just not making things and having clutter around me or gifting something … [so someone thinks], ‘Oh, that’s really sweet and sentimental, but not necessarily [what I] want’,” she said.

“Cakes aren’t going to collect any dust beneath the bed.”  She sums up her creative ethos as: “No wastage and just constant joy”.

Image credits: Jeremy Simons and Katherine Sabbath

She also loves how baking is such an accessible hobby – one that does not require bucketloads of money or expensive equipment. 

“You don’t have to go out buying a whole suite of equipment, buying all your paint brushes,” she said. “You don’t need a kiln to fire your pottery. You’ve got your oven.”

In fact, she credits a lack of tools in the early days for her signature style.

“I didn’t have many things to bake with … I had two standard six-inch cake tins, but I wanted to create really big cakes to feed 30 people, so I ended up building cakes upwards,” she recalled. 

“[And now] I guess I’m known for really tall, impractical cakes for cutting … [that are also] just really beautiful, impactful cakes to look at and share, those big celebration cakes.

“… People might look at that and be like, ‘Oh, she’s so innovative’. But I wasn’t trying to be, I just couldn’t afford anything else,” she adds. 

“You make do with what you have, and sometimes new ideas and innovation can grow from that, and that can be really exciting and nothing to be ashamed of either.”

Despite all Sabbath’s success, she still has moments of doubt.

“[I constantly ask myself how] I marry my love of creating, cooking, sharing … [with a] credible, long, successful and peaceful, joyous career path,” she said. 

“[There are] those big picture questions like, ‘What is my career? What does it mean? Can I sustain this?’.

“I get over that mental hurdle by knowing that if you have transferable skills, if you always just stay true to who you are … it can make life so much easier.” 

Although these questions still plague Sabbath, she said she is also finding it easier to challenge the status quo. 

“It’s definitely tricky,” she said. “[But] if you feel uncomfortable, and you feel like you are in a space that you don’t belong in, sometimes that is exactly where you belong. 

“It’s uncomfortable because there are so many people who aren’t like you, but just being there, giving your unique viewpoint, showing your skills, and having that be part of the workplace is so important”.