Love ‘em or just like ‘em. Fondant cakes tantalize and mesmerize us with their sight, smell .jpg)
and savor.
A three-tier round butter rum sponge cake in turquoise fondant decorated with cascading, candy-colored classic and exotic blooms, exhilarated my mood as if I had chanced upon the amazing flowers of spring. Its beauty gently grabbed attention — a promise of an extraordinarily sweet feast.
That is how I felt when I received a fondant cake on my last birthday from my friend Bill Perez of La Esperanza Bakery. I had always wanted to taste it ever since he proudly posted on Facebook: “I may not be an award-winning painter, but wait until you taste my fondant cake.”
And I took the statement as a personal endorsement of his fondant cake business, which he established in 2010 at 49 D. Atienza corner C. Tirona Streets, Batangas City, Batangas.
La Esperanza Bakery specializes in cakes for wedding, birthday and special occasions. The fondant cakes are made according to a theme or motif as specified by the client. Cakes can be done in butter rum, mocha, chocolate, red velvet, carrot pineapple walnut, banana date walnut, or other flavors based on request. They can be fashionably embellished by decorations created from fondant, gumpaste or fresh flowers, or real objects in complementary color combinations.
Preferred by celebrities and the well-heeled, it can be made all edible layers but many fondant cakes have mock tiers for stability and ease of transport specially to distant destinations.
Exclusively created, usually after a one-on-one talk with the client about its details, fondant cakes are high-end cakes executed by hand techniques from start to finish. Its relatively high price is justified by the amount of time, money and skill allotted to making each completed fondant cake. “It usually takes two days to make due to the intricacy of design,” Bill specifies.
Cakes can be bought straight from the shelf, but fondant cakes are made of high-quality materials by signature cake shops. And like France’s leading couture houses, the business is a tradition and a standard. La Esperanza Bakery’s story of sincere ways of satisfying consumer wants and its way of focusing on the expected go more than a hundred years back.
A STORY OF HOPE. In 1903, Maximo Sarmiento, a resident near the old market of Batangas City, opened a grocery and dry goods store. As his family had opened credit with the Pana grocery store, the business thrived despite stiff competition from Chinese businessmen. It was one of only two Filipino-owned businesses that did, the other an old botica.
The place was eventually converted into Panaderia La Esperanza after World War II to signify hope, the name’s English meaning, by Bill’s great grandfather, Ramon Sarmiento, who had a daughter named Nicasia. Young Pascual Perez worked as a baker there and fell in love with Nicasia and they eventually turned partners in running it. Bill’s father, Abelardo Perez Sr., is their son.
La Esperanza Bakery sold mainly breads such as pan de sal, ensaymada, biscocho, kalihim, londres, pasencia, jacobina, hopia and paborita, among others. But it was widely known for its specialty, the Spanish pastry originally known as Corona del Rey.
Passed on to Bill’s grandfather by a Spanish pastry maker before the Japanese Occupation, it is a sweet pastry similar to pilipit. The two-inch diameter, crown-shaped dough complete with a hole in the middle is fried, dipped in sugar syrup before being rolled on white sugar. As it incorporates gin, the pastry has a fine texture and crunch.
It was love at first munch, but Batanguenos found the Spanish name difficult to pronounce so it was eventually colloquialized to “oocan.” From neighborhood kids to First Lady Imelda Marcos, the specialty has a loyal following that is still in high demand to stay as Bill’s current product.
To contemporarize the business, however, La Esperanza Bakery now specializes in fondant cakes as innovated by Bill, borne out of his passion for sweets.
BILL’S PASSION. “I’ve always had a sweet tooth and loved eating cakes bought from Goldilocks and Red Ribbon. I would even ask our baker to duplicate them, but couldn’t. Out of frustration, I started experimenting with cakes and icings by reading recipe books and attending baking seminars in Manila such as Sylvia Reynoso, Heny Sidon, Maya Kitchen and others,” Bill narrates.
Using a trial-and-test method, Bill sampled cakes from different cafés and pastry shops and experimented by baking and giving them to friends for feedback. His expertise reached such a point where he could detect a cake’s ingredients and baking procedure just by tasting it.
A graduate of BA Psychology from UP Diliman, Bill eventually turned into a self-taught cake master. This skill encouraged him to put up his own bakeshop in 1995. Called Happy House Bakeshop, it sold cakes and pastries. It closed down in 1997 only to reopen in 2010 under the name of the original bakery, La Esperanza.
He made his first fondant cake for his brother’s wedding in 1999. His inspiration came from a Wilton Cake Decorating Catalog. Relatives and friends began to ask him to make fondant cakes for them until he started to sell them.
“Initially learning to work with fondant, I found one of the hardest parts was actually covering the cake and having it look smooth. I struggled with pleats around the bottom, trying to avoid cracking and tearing, avoiding corn starch or powdered sugar spots all over it,” he recalls his newbie days as a fondant cake maker.
These predicaments had him figuratively banging his head against the work table. As an advice to those new to fondant, Bill suggests to combine watching videos with other available information.
He referred to pictures and instructions, watched YouTube videos and read forums. While there is an overload of available information on the subject, he felt they were too scattered to learn efficiently. “I watched adept hands do quick work of covering a cake with fondant with no issues, but I struggled to figure out their processes,” he comments.
TURNAROUND. His turning point came when Marbee Shing, a friend from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, asked him to do the cake for her 2005 wedding at the Shangri-La Hotel. Wanting a new cake designer who was not Metro Manila-based, she also required an innovative design.
Bill customized a four-layer white cake with candied sugar tulips and butterflies. The bride gushed over the most important cake in her life. She so loved the creation that she featured Bill as an up-and-coming wedding supplier in a one-page article in Wedding Essentials, July 2005 issue, upon her appointment as editor.
This led to a flurry orders. His satisfied clients raved about his original designs as “beautiful” and “delicious.” This resulted in repeat customers, frequently the whole family ordering from him for every occasion and the all-important referrals that multiplied his clientele.
His fondant cake business flourished that he’s now supplying hotels and caterers in Batangas such as Hotel Ponte Fino and Lima Hotel.
Consult with Bill for your order by landline via (043) 7027615 or send an e-mail @ laesperanza1903@yahoo.com.