Birthday Cake Shopping with Portland Pastry Chefs
The pair behind TumTum source ingredients, including flowers, from their own backyard garden.
Pastry chefs have birthdays, too, as it happens. And unless they want to work through their special day (and who does?), they have to find a cake worthy of holding their candles. If you’re reading this, you’re probably facing your own cake-shopping conundrum. Thinking a good baker ought to be a good cake shopper, we turned to the experts to find out where they get their birthday cakes. Below, Gabriella Martinez, pastry chef and co-owner of dessert and cocktail bar Libre, and Siobhan Speirits, one half of the husband-and-wife power duo behind the buzzy Cafe Olli, share their advice on ordering cakes in Portland. How do you navigate the influx of custom Instagram cakes that came out of Covid? What is a “cottage kitchen”? If you prefer the pomp and circumstance of a storefront, there are plenty of options for you, too. Do note, whether homegrown micro-bakery or brick-and-mortar, if you want something “extra,” you’ll need at least two weeks’ notice.
A lovingly crafted birthday cake from the Cake Batch.
The Cake Batch
order online for delivery and pickup
With a portfolio that includes a Louis Vuitton bag (and pump!), a lifelike Cup Noodles, and even a snare drum, Helen Hồng Nguyễn’s custom cakes are your best local bet at pulling off the “is it cake” game. “She can create anything for anyone,” Martinez says, “whether it be Pokémon or a Nike shoe.” Cake Batch, Nguyễn’s home kitchen operation (also known as a cottage kitchen) is fully custom, but she also makes cakes that look like cakes, drawing on her own Vietnamese heritage as well as ingredients from broader South and Southeast Asia. Think ube velvet cake with berry compote, or cakes with intricate rice paper decorations. Cakes start at $150; order via email through the Cake Batch website with at least two weeks’ notice, especially if you want a USS Enterprise cake, and pick up from Nguyễn’s cottage kitchen or get delivery for $35.
The cakes at DB Dessert Company are towering affairs of frosted deliciousness.
DB Dessert Company
concordia
If you’re looking for altitude, DB Dessert Company is the place—these cakes are tall. An eight-inch (wide) cake from DB stands between four and six inches per tier and serves two dozen, nearly twice the size of a normal cake of that radius. But that’s not the only thing going for DB, as Martinez describes: “Their cakes are really, really flavorful, and [owner Damala Badon] is just great.” The cozy storefront on NE Alberta is filled with pastel pinks and mauves, and pastry cases stocked with minicakes and cupcakes. Badon and her team are happy to take custom orders (with, yes, at least two weeks’ notice), but if your party is only a few days out, you can also swing by or order online from a menu of signature recipes. Unicorn cakes, vanilla funfetti, cookies and cream, and a three-layer double chocolate, to name a few. Yes, you can still add a cutesy message.
Nothing Bundt Cakes
multiple locations
As Speirits says, “sometimes you just need a slutty grocery store cake.” Nothing Bundt Cakes exists for exactly those moments. Conveniently, the national chain has four locations scattered throughout the burbs and Vancouver. The name says it all: The fluted rings of cake start at $31 (plus two bucks if you want it wrapped in festive cellophane à la Harry & David). The classics are all here—s’mores, red velvet, carrot, confetti, vanilla, etc. Order online for pickup or delivery, add some pom-poms, plastic dinosaurs, or butterflies. Go wild. “I’ve never had a bad one,” Speirits says. “They’ve got their thing, and they stick to it, and it works for them. And you have to respect that.”
TumTum sources seasonally and locally for all of its desserts.
TumTum
Order online for pickup
If you’ve eaten at Cafe Olli, you’re certain to have ogled Speirits’s beloved chocolate layer cake. (It’s the one perched on a cake stand taunting diners.) But she gets her birthday cakes from another husband-and-wife duo, Tessa and Trevor Webb of TumTum. “[Tessa Webb] makes these cakes that are so stunning,” Speirits says, “equally beautiful and delicious.” Much of the wow comes from ingredients Webb sources from her own garden: apples, berries, cherries, figs, herbs, and flowers. Your choice of a classic cylinder or dome makes the base of a customized, dreamy garden cake (starting at $70, for a four-inch cake, and running to $145, for 12-inch). Pick from sponge cake flavors like pistachio chiffon or olive oil and pair them with buttercream or ganache frostings and a mix of fillings; vanilla custard and cardamom cream hang around all year, and seasonal fillings include things like stone fruit or fig leaf in summer, blood orange jam or roasted rosemary pear in winter. Order two weeks in advance via an online form and pick up at Cafe Olli, where Tessa works as a pastry cook.
Need a niche quote from a cult-favorite sitcom added to your cake? Trust Worker B to help.
Worker B Bakery
Order online for pickup and delivery
“I don’t like cakes that are too sweet,” says Martinez, “and Sabrina has that dialed in.” Sabrina is Sabrina Wassmer, a pastry cook at Libre who also sells custom cakes as Worker B Bakery. Wassmer works closely with customers to conjure dream cakes from scratch, consulting on how to best represent you or your loved one’s preferred tastes. She often incorporates elements of her Filipina heritage into her baking, making desserts like ube cakes and tres leches, and enjoys playing with themed designs, like a graduation cap or Jose Cuervo bottle. Request an order via Instagram direct message and Wassmer will follow up with an order form. Cakes run $75–110, depending on size and scope, and can be delivered for an extra $10. Pro tip: It’s not all cake—don’t sleep on the ube crumble cookies and pandan-coconut macaroons.
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