Jenny Arbizu
If you are a friend of Julie Engelhardt, consider yourself lucky. Engelhardt makes fabulous food creations, and her friends and family get first dibs. Pictures of her creations can be found on her tablet, such as a mouth-watering taco or a hamburger that can feed ten. Then of course, there is her award-winning pizza; one of which she shared her secret ingredients.
“For the sauce,” she explained, “you take regular white frosting and you’ll tint that red. The cheese is actually grated white chocolate.”
A double take is in order. Yes, that’s frosting and white chocolate.
Her pizza is actually a cake– as are the rest of her creations.
Hollister resident, Julie Engelhardt, has turned her quiet hobby into a well-known talent among friends and extended family. What began as a love of making Bundt cakes for her husband and sons has turned into an art form, and a possible future business.
Engelhardt is no stranger to the creative arts. She majored in Communications at California State Fullerton, which led to a career in broadcast journalism. After working for TV stations for 11 years, she stayed home to raise her children. She has been a freelance writer for local papers and has been substitute teaching for Hollister School District for 7 years.
It was while raising her children that she found the love of baking. It began with making Bundt cakes, which is her preferred cake to bake.
“The Bundt cakes are my love. I have probably about 20 Bundt-like pans that have different shapes and everything,” she said.
“To be honest, I’ve never been into making your traditional layered cakes, with trying to frost them,” she admitted.
On a whim, and after looking at cake ideas on the internet, she decided to enter one of her Bundt cakes in the San Benito County Fair in 2013. Finding different ways to make colored designs inside her cake, she entered her “Firecracker Cake” into the Tricks with a Mix Category.
In the Tricks with a Mix category, store bought cake mix is used with an addition, or a trick, from the baker.
“There were no barometers or specifications as to what you could and couldn’t do, so I figured, ‘Well, Tricks with a Mix, I might as well take a white cake and add color.’”
To Engelhardt’s surprise, she won first place in her category, and an added ‘icing on the cake’ was winning Best of Show for that division.
Engelhardt’s success in her first year at the fair stirred up her confidence to enter two cakes into the 2014 SBC Fair. She made a Halloween themed cake for the Tricks with a Mix Cakes category, and also entered her pizza cake into the Decorated Cakes category. Her pizza cake got first place in its category.
Beginning to gain recognition among her family and friends, she began getting cake requests for special occasions.
When asked about her pizza cake for a 60th birthday, she graciously accepted.
“I told her I could do the pizza cake. She goes, ‘Well, he really likes hamburgers,’” Engelhardt laughed. “I said, ‘Well, I can give it a shot!’”
Her hamburger cake was a hit, and Engelhardt began wondering what other cake creations she could make. Looking on the internet for ideas, she stumbled upon a Taco cake to make. Was there a particular friend she made it for? Nope.
“I wanted to experiment with it and see if I could do it,” she explained.
She could.
Using a 6” round pan, she halved it to create the shell. For the ‘meat,’ she took a chocolate cake and crumbled it into a bowl. “The sour cream is just white frosting,” Engelhardt explained.
Experimenting with these new cakes meant using more than just her beloved Bundt pans. After trying a regular 6” round pan for her first pizza cake, she decided to bake them in regular 10” round pizza pans. This helped with the way she was able to present them, as well.
“I’ve actually delivered my pizzas in pizza boxes,” she added. “I’ve gone to a few of the pizza restaurants around town and they’ve given me boxes. I’ve purchased a couple.”
She’s made over a dozen of her pizza cakes, and enjoys experimenting with toppings. Sliced licorice is used for olives, Ferrero Rocher chocolates for meatballs, Swedish Fish for green peppers, and fruit leather cut with circular cookie-cutters for the pepperoni. She has also taught herself how to make fondant, which she has used to create some of the vegetable toppings on the cakes.
Engelhardt’s creative mind is endless.
“I’m already thinking about what I’m doing at the fair this year,” she said.
She has been thinking about a Spaghetti and Meatball cake, as well as a Nacho cake that she hopes to attempt next.
“With the chips you could do it with pieces of fondant,” she said of the nachos, “but I’ve thought of buying the premade pizza crusts, then cutting it into strips and then triangles. For lettuce, you could take coconut and tint it green.”
The possibilities are endless with Engelhardt, as she has already realized.
Her career path may be taking a turn very soon as she delves into this fascinating hobby.
“I really enjoy doing this,” she said. “It would be nice to make it into a full time business.”
After years of having journalism-based jobs, then substitute teaching, she has found that there is no age limit to trying new things.
“I will be turning 53 this year,” she said. “I feel that you can start a new hobby at any age; life’s an experiment.”
For more information on Julie’s cakes, visit her Facebook page, Julie’s Homemade Bundt Cakes, or call her at 831-245-8462.
