Colourful ‘cake queen’ Katherine Sabbath, appeared at the Osborne Park Kitchen Warehouse on Friday 15th for a pop up party, to present us with a sample of her delicious desserts.
As soon as we arrive we are greeted with champagne which adds to the bubbly atmosphere.
Then our eyes are assaulted by an explosion of technicolour. A table is laden with rainbows of sweets.
Katherine baked the 52 pink, blue and orange ice-cream fudge cakes on Thursday night in Sydney. She created more structurally sound cones by lining them with chocolate and letting it set. Then she mixed raspberry white-chocolate brownies together with chocolate ganache, and poured the mixture into the cones. Finally she dipped them into white chocolate before adding smarties and sprinkles. Katherine transported the decadent desserts in plastic zip lock bags and cake boxes as carry-on luggage to Perth the next day, and was ecstatic to concede only three casualties!
Throughout the afternoon we are treated to a manicure,
Played balloon pinata and each win a prize,
And answer a very challenging pop quiz.
Katherine tells me she was a humanities high school teacher specialising in geography and history, until she gave it away 12 months ago to concentrate on baking full-time. Prior to that she perceived it more as a hobby, only considering baking as a career in the last few years.She admits to always having a sweet tooth and loves chocolate brownies but finds the ones she buys don’t appear to include good chocolate and seem to be padded out with oil and butter. This discovery prompted her to make her own and Katherine has been baking for 15 years, since she turned 14. Most of it was ‘trial and error’ as she never actually took cooking classes, and only began to create ‘serious cake stuff’ in her 20’s, with her friends’ encouragement. To satiate our sweet tooth we are able to feast on green gumballs,
bright yellow biscuits,
purple popcorn,
and red swirly lollipops.
Katherine calls herself an untrained, home-baker and only enrolled in cake classes in 2015 to feel ‘a little bit more credible.’ When she has time she bakes cakes for other people but she prefers to teach classes, host demonstrations and focus on recipe development. Currently she is developing recipes to accompany Pyrex’s new range which she describes as ‘fun’ as it allows her to try different things. She says, “My love for baking always stemmed from making cakes for my friends and family and knowing they weren’t paying, so it was always just a generous act. I could do whatever I wanted and they had to accept it, because it’s a free cake, who wouldn’t?”
Growing up with a Vietnamese mother, Katherine ate sticky rice and jurien fruit but very little dairy, butter or chocolate. But, she says, “My German grandmother was always really heavy handed with butter and cream and she really fostered that love of good quality fatty foods! You don’t have to have a lot of it. You can have a good piece of cake with thickened cream on the side and be satisfied. I do owe it all to my grandmother. She died this year, but I did get to tell her all about it before. I’m glad I got to tell her.”
Katherine is currently working on a book and once she moves into a ‘nicer’ kitchen, she hopes to start a YouTube channel to reach out to a wider audience through links and videos, and avoid constant travel. For now you can follow this sweet young lady on Instagram @katherine_sabbath
