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What was once a family-run East Patchogue institution is now a dreamscape for two Queens-based award-winning cake decorators.
Nicole Minor and Anali Roldan’s new Sugar Dreams Bakery is serving custom cakes and other desserts at 15 S. Country Rd. in East Patchogue.
Those in the area will remember the location as the former Swan Bakery, which owners Guy and Val Gagliano closed Aug. 6 to retire after 28 years in business.
The masterful cake decorators said community feedback has been positive since their soft opening last Saturday. Their cheese Danishes, jelly donuts and crumb cakes that line one case in the shop have sold particularly well. The other of the two cases boasts an assortment of cupcakes, small round cakes and mini cheese cakes.
Sugar Dreams Bakery’s Grand Opening is the weekend and Minor and Roldan are offering sales and gifts Friday, Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m.
Today, all custom cake orders are 20% off, tomorrow the duo will give out a free cookie gift bag with every purchase and Sunday their Italian bread will be half priced.
This is Minor and Roldan’s first independent venture after years of working their ways through various other bakeries.
“We are both at a point in our careers where we want to be able to do and create no holds barred,” Minor said. It’s what we love to do, we always have. We’re both very creative and artistic. This is our permission to live happy.”
‘anything they could ever dream of’
Neither of the two decorators had a cookie cutter entrance into baking. Minor fell into baking out of necessity. She said she attended college for stage management, needed a job after graduation and found one at a local bakery. From there, she fell in love with cake decorating and left behind the theater.
“For me, I started do cakes joking to my friends,” Roldan said. “They were like… x-rated. I started liking it so I went to school and I started working after that.”
What started as hilarious birthday cakes turned into an award-winning talent for Roldan. She decorated a cake with a guitar-wielding Dolly Parton figure for the SoFlo Cake and Candy Expo in Miami. She also crafted a Walking Dead-themed cake featuring the character Michonne and her two pet walkers, which she successfully transported 16 hours by bus from Chinatown to the Ultimate Sugar Show Atlanta.
The bakery’s website and its Facebook page are loaded with photos of cakes Minor and Roldan decorated throughout their careers. They boast cakes replicating board games and comic books, topped with superheroes, villains and princesses. There are even a few cakes of life-sized puppies.
Discussing each others creations, Roldan said her favorite cake of Minor’s is a folded fire fighter’s uniform topped with fire helmet. Minor said Roldan’s KISS-themed cake topped with Gene Simmons’ head is her most incredible.
While Minor and Roldan are certainly dreamers, the shop is a place where their customers’ desires become reality.
“We do literally anything they could ever dream of in sugar,” Minor said. “There are no limits here.”
Scroll down for photos of their creations.
