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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — One Cambridge pastry chef is teaching others about the world of edible art through floral cake decorating.
Last week, Julia Mattis hosted her first cake decorating workshop in Harvard Square, inviting the community to embrace their creativity with some buttercream frosting and fresh flowers.
"I don't want the things that I'm making to seem like a mystery or gate-keep it; it's so much fun and I want to share it with people," she told WBZ NewsRadio's Emma Friedman. "We forget that we can eat the things that we grow just because they're so beautiful they don't seem edible."
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Mattis uses edible fresh flowers she gets at local farmers markets and nearby farms to decorate her cakes. She tries to only incorporate flowers you can eat into her cakes and shows others how to do the same.
"People usually take the flowers out but then I tell them 'you can also eat the flowers' and everyone's like 'what?'" said Mattis.
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During the pandemic, she started learning about flower foraging and began to develop her own cake decorating style. She had spent years working in the fine dining industry where she had grown accustomed to having a rigid structure and limited creativity.
Photo: WBZ NewsRadio
"I just wanted to have an event that made people feel like they could do it rather than it being this whole mystery of [people thinking] 'oh it's really beautiful and I could never do it' because I'm like my 6-year-old cousin can do it."
Over the summer, she was inspired when teaching her 6-year-old cousin some cake decorating techniques.
Earlier this year, she decided to start her own side-business, Windowsill Bakery, making custom floral cakes and baked goods.
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