For Glenda, Success Is A Piece Of Cake
The Sunday Age
Saturday April 26, 1997
IF CHOCOLATE sticky date cake or sour cherry and almond tarts sound appealing, then Glenda Saade's Ribbons & Bows Cafe is the place to sit and have a break from shopping and spending.
While the business only opened in early March, Mrs Saade has been supplying her husband Alexander's restaurant, the well-known Georgio's in Glenferrie Road, with elaborate cakes and meringues for 18 years.
She has created birthday cakes, christening cakes and wedding cakes in the shape of sunflowers, Humpty Dumpty, roses - and even a pair of breasts.
"They were requested by Deborah Byrne for a birthday celebration," laughs Mrs Saade.
A string of well-known faces regularly place special orders with her. "When Eddie McGuire married recently, I was asked to make the petit-fours and a smorgasbord of gateaux for the reception. That was a lot of work."
Mrs Saade says she gets her knack for creating the impossible with a few eggs, some flour, sugar and butter from her mother and her upbringing in country Victoria.
"I just had this absolute passion for cooking cakes like a lot of country girls," she says.
"I always loved cooking when I was a child. My mother was a very good cook and I'd watch her baking in the kitchen. I'd try and copy her when I was very small and I think baking is in my blood.
"Initially when I went to work for Alex I sold his cakes. I never made them for him," she says.
"Then I asked him to give me a go at baking cakes for his restaurant and he agreed and early this year we decided I'd have my own specialty business because they were selling so well."
Mrs Saade also makes gluten-free and sugar-free cakes. She begins work at 4.30am and never finishes much before 10pm, cooking and decorating cakes for her business, for Georgio's and for a small group of Melbourne restaurants and cafes.
Her bakery completes about 400 elaborate cakes every week as well as the hundreds of small, individual cakes for the cafe.
"I try and cater for all tastes. I have the rich, sticky, chocolatey cakes at one end of the scale and then I get people who are watching their weight or their cholesterol asking me the fat content of certain cakes and wanting something lighter, too," she says.
"I can't tell people exactly how much fat is in each cake but I can guide them towards which cakes have less fat than others. I make one cake that contains no yeast, no fat, no eggs and no wheat or flour for people with a lot of allergies. It contains things like pumpkin and soy flour and people are often surprised at how tasty cakes like that actually are. They think they will be bland but they're not.
"None of my cakes are copied from recipes. They are all my own creation and whenever I see a cake in a recipe book, I always want to add something extra to it or change it to make it more special. I make banana cake but I add mango to it. I always want to create something you won't find anywhere else."
* Ribbons & Bows is at Shop 6, 1111 High Street, Armadale. Telephone: (03) 9822 6100.
© 1997 The Sunday Age