Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 30, 1992 TAG: 9201300483
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETSY BIESENBACH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
SHE HAS A SWEET BUSINESS
Hannah Donahue's apartment can be hard to find, amid the farmhouses and pastures along Bandy Road in Roanoke County.But once you're there and out of your car, it gets easier. Donahue runs a cake decorating business from her home, and the scent of baking is irresistible.
Donahue, 34, and her husband, Michael, moved from Roanoke to Roanoke County two years ago so she could start her business. Roanoke's laws required expensive modifications to her kitchen, Donahue said. "It's not real conducive to cottage industries," she said.
In Roanoke County, where food preparers only need separate kitchens if they're handling perishables, she can work out of her apartment kitchen. "The only thing I had to give up was cream cheese icing," she said.
Her kitchen is inspected regularly, Donahue said, and she's grateful for it. The inspectors often give her helpful hints.
Donahue began "piddling around" with cake-making about 14 years ago, while she was ill. She had been working for Grumman Emergency Products, where she was trained to paint lettering and striping on the vehicles. "I was great at lettering and lousy at striping," she said.
After several years, Donahue began to notice she was sick much of the time. Her doctors found she was allergic to the paint, and she had to quit her job.
Soon afterward, she became allergic to almost everything, and her symptoms took the form of an arthritic condition which was so painful she had to stay at home. Then Michael bought her a cake decorating kit.
"I was hooked," Donahue said. The worse the pain was, she said, the harder she worked at it. Her background in lettering was helpful, as was a lifelong interest in "artsy-craftsy" projects. Although she was allergic to sugar and flour, Donahue said she wasn't tempted to eat her cakes. "The more you play with [food], the less you want to eat it," she said.
Donahue spent the rest of the time she was recovering testing different cakes and icings, and learning how to make delicate decorations and life-like flowers out of rolled fondant, a dough-like confection that can be manipulated like modelling clay.
"You can make anything with sugar," Donahue said.
In 1991, she said, she finally made enough of a profit to have to pay self-employment tax. She also was able to quit her teaching job at a preschool.
Besides working on her own, Donahue has been to classes in cake decorating. One class emphasized techniques used in England and Australia, where a wedding cake is a fruitcake covered with molded rolled fondant.
Although Donahue knows fruitcake probably will never catch on here, she urges her clients to try the fondant. It gives the cake a satiny smooth look.
"Roanoke is a very conservative place," she said, "People don't know they can get this kind of thing," and it's hard to introduce something new. "People either want something different and elegant or something just like everyone else's," she said.
For those who want something different, Donahue can even produce a cake that uses real flowers, sugar lace that matches the bride's gown, or even an icing that matches the wallpaper. She builds her decorations on four flavors of pound cake. White chocolate, which is the most popular; mocha chocolate; amaretto; and butter cake. Many brides, thinking wedding cake has to be tasteless, are often more concerned with the appearance of the cake, but Donahue tries to make it "a tasty little tidbit."
"That's the main selling point," she said. "It tastes good."
One of the biggest challenges, she said, is that America has such a mix of cultures that nothing qualifies as "traditional."
"You can do whatever you want to do."
Donahue's family pitches in and helps, she said. Her sister-in-law, Becky Donahue, assists with the decorating, and her father gives her a hand with the deliveries. She has a deal with her 5-year-old daughter, Sarah, she said. "She doesn't put her fingers in anything, and she gets most of the leftovers," she explained.
Michael used to test the cakes and the icing, she said, but he got tired of the cake pretty quickly. He learned a valuable lesson about tasting icing without permission, she said, when he ate a big spoonful of "royal" icing, which, while edible, is not especially tasty. But Michael is "wonderful and wholly supportive," she said.
Donahue also makes birthday and special-occasion cakes in three-dimensional shapes. She has made mice, teddy bears, lions, and a hummingbird. She can even paint a name or a scene, such as a sailing ship, on a cake.
But wedding cakes are her first love. "I like wedding cakes because they're traditional. I believe in weddings and marriage," she said.
One thing Donahue will not do is cut her own cakes. "It's a messy, yucky job," she said.
And it's hard for her to see her work destroyed. "I find it painful," she said. "I can't stand it."