Sugar and Slate started when I relocated back to Atlanta after five years spent in coastal North Carolina, where I was curator of a small gallery and manager of a specialty cake bakery. I drew inspiration from my paternal grandmother, Anne Slate, who secretly wrote a cooking and baking column in the local newspaper under a pen name and was my first baking instructor. Aside from her love of the kitchen and general Southern etiquette, she was an avid fan of miniatures and spent years building and decorating dollhouses with my grandfather. I believe I inherited both her love of culinary artistry and her eye for fine detail, as some of my favorite cakes are the ones I end up fixating upon with tiny paintbrushes and tweezers. I consider the production of desserts to be one of my favorite art forms. I think there’s something truly wonderful in spending hours, days – weeks, even – creating a piece of art that exists in its completed form for only a few hours, which is then deliberately deconstructed and persists only in photographs and memories. As everyone deserves something special that reflects both their taste and personality, I love to create cakes that are as unique as the individuals and events that occasion them.
