An Interview With Cake Wars Champ, Cory Pohlman
Today on The Mag we have Cory Pohlman, an amazing mom, cake decorator and artist living in Los Angeles. You might recognize Cory and her absolutely amazing creations from shows like Cake Wars and Halloween Wars (to name a few!). Read all about her business, how she started baking, her zoom classes for kids and more!
Tell us your story! We’d love to hear a little bit about yourself, your family and your business.
I live in Los Angeles, California with my husband and our eleven year old son. I started my career at Rosebud Cakes in Beverly Hills and went on to own a cake and chocolate company, Bonhoff and Kent. I have appeared on the Food Network shows like Halloween Wars and Cake Wars All-stars and I won Cake Wars and Sugar Dome.
What inspired you to start baking?
I always wanted to be an artist even as a child. And specifically I wanted to be a painter. So you can imagine how amazing it was for me as a fourteen year old girl, when my small family randomly moved to Paris after my dad’s company transferred him. I was certainly hooked on the dream of being an artist. But when I look back at my time there, the fascinating and dedicated food culture in Paris clearly imprinted itself on me more than I realized at the time. After I finished my graduate program for art, I decided to combine my two passions and completed training at Le Cordon Blue. I found cake decorating and baking and I never looked back.
You make some of the most beautiful and elaborate sweets ever. What are a few of your favorites that you’d made?
I made a sled pulled by butterflies that was big we had to bring it to the party in a U-haul. I just finished an 80’s themed birthday cake that was lots of fun. My son’s favorite was a severed head cake I made for a Halloween wedding (the head was the groom).
Tell us about your Zoom cake decorating and baking classes for kids. What are they like and what kinds of things can people expect to make?
Learning to bake is learning confidence. Once you’ve made enough mistakes and had to use creative problem solving to overcome them you’ve achieved that next step in the kitchen beyond just learning individual recipes. Baking is science and once kids start to recognize how ingredient’s ratios and mixing methods yield specific results, they start to gain a sense of mastery. It’s really my job to create parameters that help them to achieve their own success.
Anything else you want to add?
Many of my students dream of being on a Food Network baking competition. I like to use this as motivation for them to work on skills that don’t have much to do with baking, but I know will help them down the line. The first being perseverance, because you definitely have to learn to walk before you can run in baking and decorating. The second is, accepting failure and problem solving because there is no such thing as a perfect day in the kitchen. And the third, and maybe most important for young girls. is public speaking. I encourage them to discuss what they are doing and talk about their progress out loud to me or the rest of the class while they work. This is more difficult than you’d think and it’s great practice for public speaking.
And finally, where can we find you?
o Website: Corypohlman.com
o Instagram: @corypohlmancakes
