Evil, but in a good way...
Robin Martin (The Evil Cake Genius) began decorating cakes in 1996 when she opened Gateaux Inc. in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She started her business by setting up at local bridal shows to drum up business and create word of mouth. She decorated her cakes at rented commercial kitchen space in churches and apartment buildings and in a few years she was able to open her own small bakery. After years of clients and other professionals asking what to call her, she finally decided that she would let her employees decide what her title would be. While not officially a pastry chef (self-taught) and not only a baker or decorator, per se, the Gateaux girls decided that Robin was clearly the “Evil Cake Genius”.
Over many years of creating custom cakes for clients Robin developed numerous techniques and tools to not only make her cakes more impressive, but more impressive in a shorter amount of time! Her attention to detail and her inability to settle for "good enough" when it came to a client's cake quickly became her calling card. Local, National and Global recognition soon followed. She never compromised in her quest for perfection regardless of the circumstances and this made some of her more notable experiences, uh... slightly stressful. Her first airplane ride with a cake to Manhattan to visit Brides Magazine took at least 3 1/2 years off her life. Her first television appearance on The Food Network Challenge Dr. Seuss Cakes edition took another 4 years off her life, but on the plus side, she learned how to properly blow off a little steam by blowing up a Food Network sample cake (video below). She lost 6 years of her life filming a season of Amazing Wedding Cakes for the WE network. She also had the honor of being hired by General Mills/Betty Crocker to decorate Betty White's 90th birthday cake. This was the first time she got to fly on a private jet with a cake! So only 2 years off for that. Various other appearances, celebrity cakes, television producers, magazine interviews and having to work with her husband have also taken their toll. In fact, we believe she may only have 2 weeks to live. Nope... this just in, she passed away while you were reading this.
We're kidding of course, but what's not a joke is that Robin knows the journey and every point along the way. From decorating cake show dummies in her 400 square foot apartment to running evilcakegenius.com on a daily basis, she knows that decorating ANY edible product is always a challenge on some level.
In 2014 she decided it was time to share some of her favorite decorating techniques and tools she had developed with other decorators around the globe. She began selling her favorite stencil designs to other cake decorators via her bakery's Facebook page. The result was overwhelmingly positive so she decided to launch a dedicated retail site. So was born evilcakegenius.com!
From the very beginning she's dedicated herself to helping decorators make their creations more impressive and in a shorter amount of time. Our customers include everyone from hobby bakers making their first custom cake for a friend to world renowned pastry chefs looking for the latest trend, tool or gadget to help them up their already substantial decorating expertise. Robin's original mission of making decorators better and faster shapes not only the tools that we develop and manufacture, but help guide our carefully curated selection of ALL of our kitchen tested products.
Oh, also, yes. She was bitten by a radioactive cake.