Liz Marden, the pastry chef best known for her ornate wedding cakes, has opened a bakery and cafe that now offers delectable goodies in downtown Kennett Square. Her new bakery, on Union Street, offers residents an excellent place for pastries, bagels and coffee while still providing Liz with the space needed to create her fanciful cakes.
The new shop offers a wide assortment of baked goods. One one recent day, the display case was filled chipwiches, tiramasu pyramids, cannolis, ricotta cookies, scones and brownie puddles. In honor of becoming a Kennett Square bakery, Liz has also started baking sugar cookies in the shape of a mushroom.
The Kennett Square Dish recently sat down with Liz to discuss her plans for the new cafe, the state of the baking business, and her passionate pursuit of excellence.
KS Dish: When did you start baking?
Liz: I started baking at age five with my mother and grandmother. I was born and raised in Britain so when you were at that age and in that culture, at that time, people were geared toward teaching their children to be homemakers, not professional women, but I developed a love for baking and making desserts for my family for many years. Later, I worked in a dental office and it was always requested that I baked people’s favorites.
KS Dish: You are known for your work at the Hotel duPont. When did you work there?
Liz: I contacted Gunther Highland at the Hotel duPont in 1984 and asked him for an interview. I sent him my resume and called him every day for six weeks. At that time he was one of the seven master pastry chefs in the country. He hired me the day that he met me because he said I was persistent! (She laughs.) From there I won a gold medal at the Philadelphia food show, and a trophy for the most original piece in the show. I was at Hotel duPont for three years and when Gunther left I followed him. I worked with Gunther for six years, until I took time off to have my second child, Kathryn.
KS Dish: What happened after you had Kathryn?
Liz: When she was six months old, I got a call from a friend for a cake. It was like dropping a stone in a pond, the ripples have gotten larger ever since. I started doing wedding cakes. I was private for a long time doing that and then I was a bakery instructor for years. Then I opened my first shop in Hockessin.
KS Dish: How many wedding cakes do you make in a year?
Liz: We average four a weekend, but there are some weekends where we do ten or twelve. Everything goes out looking like a showpiece. I deliver them or an assistant delivers them. Every cake gets delivered with a chef.
KS Dish: What’s the key to making an excellent cake?
Liz: All fresh ingredients. Using real ingredients like eggs and butter and cream. Real cream, real butter, real eggs. We don’t use anything from a container, like pre-made butter cream, that would be so bad. My influence from being in Europe and trained by European chefs has really colored my thinking overall about desserts and pastries. People say, ‘I don’t like cake but I like your cake,’ and it’s because it is moist and delicious. I have very high standards about what goes out of here.”
KS Dish: Tell us about your staff in the bakery.
Liz: My assistant Kim Tavani is my right arm and we have two high school girls who are in training, they want to go to culinary school. You have to have passion, focus, an interest in baking. I look for people with that spark in their eye, people who think outside the box and don’t mind doing a lot of hard work. What we do is very strenuous and a lot of hours on our feet. You have to be dedicated with what you are doing. It’s really all about excellence in product. It’s not about perfection, because that’s very hard to achieve, but it’s about having something really excellent.”
KS Dish: What’s your favorite thing to eat?
Liz: (smiles) It’s hard to say since I product develop anything. I love chocolate. Anything with chocolate is good, but I find myself working not just on elaborate cakes but also creating the lattice on tops of pies. I like it all. It’s hard to define your favorite. I eat a little piece of dark chocolate every single day.
KS Dish: How is baking different than cooking?
Liz: When I started my lecture as an instructor, I started out by saying baking is a science. It’s nothing you can really mess around with. You have to be very precise and very accurate. It’s takes a detailed oriented person to do that because you have to be focused. No throwing in a dash of this and a dash of that. Everything has to be very accurate. You need to know cause and effect. There’s a lot of details. You have to know how to balance a recipe.
KS Dish: But yet your cakes are a work of art?
Liz: Well, yeah.
KS Dish: It’s science and art?
Liz: It’s art and science combined. Many schools require pastry chef students to have an art background, because art is so important. I think if you have an innate ability for art in you it will come out. Some things develop with practice too. We tell aspiring chefs, practice, practice, practice. You have to learn skills sets as you go along. You don’t become a pastry chef overnight.
KS Dish: Why are there so few bakeries out here in Chester County?
Liz: From what I read in trade journals, the economy has a lot to do with baking. It’s really a game of survival. You have to watch your ingredient costs and your employment costs and all those things have to be balanced. It an expensive business to be in. In the last five years, the baking industry has been hit with more expensive chocolate, sugar commodities have gone up, flour, wheat production, all of those commodities that have been stable for twenty years have skyrocketed. The other thing I find the most interesting is – people come in and say there was a bakery and whatever and when the dad retired the bakery closed – it’s often times the second generation doesn’t want to continue what the first generation started. I hear a lot of that. It’s a hard business to be in.
The Liz Marden bakery is truly a family business. While Liz oversees the bakery, her son Matt handles retail operations. Daughter Kathryn manages the books and does marketing. Liz’s husband Gary helps with the logistics on weekends, delivering wedding cakes to sites as far away as the Union League in Philadelphia to Rehoboth Beach Country Club.
Now that they’ve settled in to their new cafe, the Mardens are working on several partnerships with local organizations. They plan on offering soups, sandwiches and salads provided by the Centerville Cafe by October 1st. They are working with Mrs. Robinson’s Tea Shop to host high teas throughout the year. “People will be able to make a reservation and sit down for high tea. The Robinsons will do the tea and I’ll do the desserts,” Liz said.
They are also working with Longwood Gardens for the upcoming Christmas season. “We are the gingerbread bakers for Longwood Gardens,” Liz announced. “We’ll be baking over 1,000 cookies for their gingerbread themed Christmas Holiday.” The gingerbread cookies will be shellacked and hung on trees throughout. They will also create gingerbread house replicas of the Conservatory and the Piers duPont House that will be on display through the holiday.
Find Liz Marden Bakery and Cafe at 110 South Union Street in Kennett Square or online at LizMarden.com.
