Cakes according to your dream

CAKES can be boringly square, round, tiered and iced. Can they look any other way? Can they look like your dream cake?

With LMG The Pastry Chef, they sure can. What about a computer cake for a techie, a cake like your favorite bag, or for the man in your life, a cake that looks like his favorite shoe!

Thoroughly edible, of course, and delicious, too!

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Lani M. Garcia is the woman behind the name “pastry chef.” She makes a variety of cheese cakes (“I Love New York” being one of her best sellers and it really looks scrumptious and quite delectable, too) and other types of cakes.

She makes a lot of cookies also, besides the customized cakes, which are her forte.

Lani is the daughter of Dr. Lamberto Garcia for whom she made a shoe cake for Father’s Day. She says she has always been fascinated about food, but like her siblings who grew up in a “medic atmosphere,” she took up dentistry in college but stopped after her fourth year: she could not see herself looking at decayed teeth all day long. She would rather bake a cake.

Her father made no fuss about her decision, saying that she should do whatever she was happy with. Lani recalls she was always interested in food even at a young age, as her parents would bring the family to different restaurants. And she also enjoyed watching culinary shows on TV.

So when she stopped her dentistry studies, she took a year of basic culinary arts at the Philippine School of Culinary Arts.

Then she went to Manila to study at the International School of Culinary Arts and Hotel Management. There she earned a diploma in pastry arts and bakery management.

After that, she wanted to open a coffee shop but decided against it and in the meantime, received orders for her customized cakes. These were very well received and so she formally opened her bakeshop in the front yard of the family home on November 2008.

Her customized cakes seem to have been making waves since then. One of her customers was former president Joseph Estrada who ordered a cake for Gov. Gwen Garcia! For such a young bakeshop, this was a feat!

A mayor had also previously ordered a cake for the governor, and it was in the form of the Provincial Capitol!

Someone even asked her to make a Santo Niño cake, which she could do but did not, because she couldn’t think of anyone cutting up and eating the Niño.

Her fondant-covered customized confections have a variety of cake bases, depending on the customer’s specifications: chocolate with chocolate filling, cookies and cream with strawberry filling, carrot cake, fruit cake, red velvet cake with vanilla filling, and banana cake with caramel walnut filling. Any of these base cakes ensure that the customized item will not only be good to look at but will also be delectable.

Lani seldom accepts rush jobs because everything in the customized cake is hand-molded.

Usually, wedding cakes must be ordered a month before the date, and birthday and other-occasion cakes, a week before. Rush orders are accepted only if she and her girls have the time for it as she does not want anything from LMG looking less than perfect

With Lani, you can have your perfectly looking cake of your dreams and eat it, too!