One would expect to find any cake decorating studio in a mess of equipment, icing and utensils but Monica Ferguson, 52, keeps it neat and tidy.
She hails from Roodekrans and lets residents eat cake. Ferguson belongs to the South African Cake Decorators Guild (SACDG) and discovered her passion for beautifully styled icing in 1985.
“My father phoned me one day to tell me about a lady who was giving cake decorating lessons in butter icing in Brixton at the time.
“He was a hobby junkie but decided that cake decorating is not a manly hobby.”
After a few lessons Ferguson was hooked but could not continue due to time constraints. She took in up again in 1990, redoing her basic course. She joined the Roosevelt Park branch of the Guild in 1991 and later completed her basic exam (1996) and teacher’s exam (2000). She also completed her intermediate and advanced exams in 2009. She later left her job as a secretary to pursue cake decorating full time and started giving cake decoration classes from her home studio.
Partnering with Magnolia Bake and Cake on Ontdekkers Road, she recently helped complete birthday cakes for the King of Swaziland, Mshwati III. However, she said, “I don’t see that as a personal achievement, we were a team after all”. A personal highlight for her was being able to do her son’s wedding cake in April 2010.
“I’ve lost count of how many cakes I’ve baked and/ or decorated over the years,” she said.
Her favourite style of cake is handbag cakes that she usually creates for female birthday parties or bachelorette parties. She also thoroughly enjoys creating African cakes, “as they’re always colourful and challenging because they’re so out-of-the-box”. Nothing trumps making sugar flowers, however, and she’s started to provide them for Magnolia’s on consignment.
“Creating a cake, baking it and icing it, can be very expensive to practice as a hobby,” she said.
Ideally, she has around a week to complete one such assignment, “but I’ve had requests two or three days before the event”. Ferguson steers away from doing vulgar, “naughty” cakes, “but I did make a naked man for a bachelorette party once”.
Currently red velvet cakes are trendy for weddings, she said, and boys’ parties are usually themed around Batman whereas girls currently like Dora the Explorer or The Little Mermaid-themed birthday cakes. Ferguson can be contacted through the SACDG’s Roosevelt Park branch on 011 478 3434 or 082 461 1788.
For a gallery of her current project, click here.
