Tropical cakes, pies, and cookies
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6322 6th Ave S Georgetown
206 / 763-1151
281 SW 41st St Renton
425 / 282-4972 website
-Georgetown closed Mondays
-Renton closed Sundays and Mondays
Interview with co-owner, Gregory Callier
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| slice of three-flavor rainbow cake |
My name is Gregory B. Callier, vice president, co-owner, chief financial officer, baker extraordinaire of Cakes of Paradise Bakery. We specialize in tropical flavored cakes and pastries.
About 15 years ago my auntie Mary Buza-Sims created these recipes based off of stuff she grew up tasting in her native home of Kauai--that’s one of the islands in Hawaii. And she basically came up with these recipes. She had been baking for years and years, ever since we were really little.
She started doing it for friends and family members, making cakes for them, and eventually people just came to her and said, ‘Hey, could you do them and we’ll pay you?’. And so she started doing it in a little shop in Georgetown, Seattle. And she trained up her kids and her two youngest boys are twins and they’re my business partners, Umi and Mosie Sims, and we just have been doing it ever since.
We have about four bakers. We’re all men. None of us have went to school, we’ve just been trained by the master chef, Ms. Mary Buza-Sims, and she’s our number one supporter. She’s a Facebook fan, and she supports us a hundred percent.
She left all the recipes to her sons and said, You guys take it and run with it! And we’ve been doing it strong ever since. So were just trying to expand our product and just take it to another level.
Then we have different pastries and stuff. We have macadamia nut cream pie, coconut cream pie, banana cream pie. We’re starting to do some other pies, like just the other day we did a dobash...a haupia coconut pie...we’re doing a strawberry guava cheesecake, mango cheesecake...
Then we have our whole cakes. We have four different sizes of whole cakes. So we have a 9”, quarter sheet, half sheet, and a full sheet. Those range anywhere from the lowest being $27 up to $120.
So we have a guava, which is a very popular fruit in the tropic, you know, islands and stuff. So we have a guava...We have mango--of course, everybody knows about mango--got a mango cake. We have passionfruit, which like I said is another popular fruit in tropical places, mainly Hawaii. We have a haupia cake, which is a coconut cake.
We have rainbow, which is a guava, passionfruit and lime cake, three-layer cake. We have chantilly cake, which is like a chocolate cake, light buttery icing with macadamia nuts on top. We have a dobash cake, which is like a dark chocolate cake; it’s really rich, the texture of the filling is in-between like a pudding and a custard.
One of the first times I had the cakes, it was the guava cake, and it was for my grandmother’s retirement party a few years back. And the first time I had it, I mean, I was just so impressed by the cake and just how flavorful, and not too overly sweet, and light...it was just amazing. And that’s what people are getting today.
When we decorate our cakes we put a fresh flower on the cake, so a fresh orchid, and a couple leather ferns and stuff. It’s just a, you know, subtle but nice, elegant touch to it. We just try to provide people with the best service that we can.
I’ve never lived in Hawaii. I’ve visited Hawaii a couple times. And the local people over there are so warm and inviting and friendly. Basically, having aloha is not something you can wear or fake. It’s just in you. It’s a part of Hawaiian culture and either you have the aloha or you don’t. And that’s something that we try to express and put out through our cakes. And so when people taste it, it’s a happy feeling, it’s a good feeling. Makes them want to come back, and tell a friend also.
So sweet foods are part of that aloha? Like giving people something pleasurable?
Yes; yeah, definitely, yep.
