Valentine’s Day is a boon for any bakery, but for PennyCakes
owner Penny Perluss, this month is doubly sweet. That’s because
Feb. 20 marks the one-year anniversary of her Gilroy bakery.
Valentine’s Day is a boon for any bakery, but for PennyCakes owner Penny Perluss, this month is doubly sweet. That’s because Feb. 20 marks the one-year anniversary of her Gilroy bakery.
The cake specialty business, which sits in the Hecker Pass Plaza at First Street and Westwood Drive, has been a labor of love for Perluss and a shared joy for her husband, Ken, who has helped along the way.
“It makes me happy doing this stuff,” Penny said this week with a smile. “I’m addicted.”
Penny’s business may be relatively new, but she has been baking cakes for friends and family for years. She became involved in the Gilroy Foundation shortly after she and Ken moved to Gilroy nine years ago, and gradually built a reputation for her delectables.
Penny Perluss, 58, retired from a career in human resources before she considered starting a bakery. While she and her husband were in India in 2007 for her husband’s work, she traveled to Sri Lanka to take private lessons from R.L. Clement, a cake decorator she had seen on the Food Network.
It was under his tutelage that she learned how to make small lifelike flowers that she says are light and realistic.
“He’s really, really good at this,” she said.
Even with all that experience, opening the bakery had its challenges. The Perlusses recalled that they were the only people on staff during their initial week of business, keeping them busy.
On average, a cake for 20 to 30 people takes about seven hours to prepare, Penny said. However, she recalled making a cake that was patterned after a palace in India took as long as 10 hours.
Some of her creations seem as if they would belong in a gallery rather than in someone’s stomach, with themes ranging from comic book characters to floral patterns.
For Valentine’s Day, Penny is serving up red velvet cupcakes, which have a moist chocolatey velvet interior topped with waves of red frosting and a glitter of minuscule red sugary hearts. In addition, some cupcakes sported a frog made of a malleable sugary mixture called fondant. One type of frog had a golden crown on its head and another had a heart over its lips.
The playful characters were used to represent the phrase, “You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince.”
On Thursday, a couple of customers gave kudos to the bakery.
“I think it’s very good, very delicious,” Gilroy resident Vedani Escudero said. “The colors are really pretty, and it has good prices.”
Another customer, Tony Rangel, said he uses the cupcakes as rewards for his children for doing well in school.
“They taste good,” he said. “And they’re a motivator,” he added with a laugh.
Over time, the bakery has developed several loyal clients, including one who donated a chandelier, plates and a stand to decorate the bathroom. Other decor within the bakery also reminds her of friends and family.
For instance, one customer gave her a framed collage with the PennyCakes label and individual pennies that commemorate the year she started baking cakes and the year she opened her business.
She said her brother came up with phrases that are scrawled in cursive on the bakery’s walls. One of them proclaims, “Diamonds, roses and cake, not necessarily in that order,” while the other states, “Frankly my dear, I’d rather eat cake.”
Penny also has a giant photo of a wedding cake she made for one of her close friends. Meanwhile, customers may notice the National brand cash register, which dates from 1910, or PennyCakes’ light-up sign created by locally based Branded Boards.
“I like being in this place,” Penny said. “It has good vibes for me.”
Loyal customers have added to those vibes, and Penny has no shortage of stories about her faithful clients.
For instance, she recalled recently baking a dessert for a boy who had never had sweets before because of certain allergies. She smiled as she described the way the boy’s eyes lit up as he ate the specially made dessert.
On another occasion, she recalled when a man asked for the bakery to replicate the top of his wedding cake for his and his wife’s one-year anniversary, as they no longer had the cake top. Penny did not realize that the cake was a surprise for his wife and recalled how his wife wept with joy upon seeing it.
“It was the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen,” Penny said.
Penny has helped several other couples with wedding cake orders during the past year and she often offers a bit of advice.
When a couple walked into the business on Wednesday and tried to determine which cake may be pleasing to their guests, Penny told them, “I believe because you can’t please everyone, your wedding cake should be exactly what you want.”
Gradually, word is getting out about PennyCakes, although she said there are still people who stop by and say that they never knew the shop existed.
Penny will be doing cupcake workshops at Gavilan College later this year, which not only should get word out about the business but also will allow her to teach people a craft she loves.
In the meantime, she is enjoying working in the shop, and her husband said he enjoys watching her follow her dream.
“I love being here, mostly because I get to see Penny do what she loves doing,” Ken said.
Penny smiled back at him lovingly, “See, I told you I was a lucky woman.”
She feels fortunate in many ways, doing what she loves for a living and building relationships with regular customers, she said.
“This is kind of a dream, and I was fortunate enough and lucky enough to have it become a reality,” Penny said.
