Operating as The Mischief Maker, Lexington-based cake designer and lifestyle blogger Alex Narramore merges her love for baking, gardening and art in the highly detail-oriented, award-winning sugar flowers that adorn her custom-designed cakes.
Meticulously modeled after actual flowers grown in her garden, each petal, stem, stamen and vine in Narramore’s designs is crafted by hand out of fondant to accurately reflect the shape, color and scale of actual flowers. Narramore, who studied studio arts in college, draws from her arts background to mix the colors she uses to hand-paint each detail. No pre-mixed or pre-manufactured colors are used in her designs. While it might be difficult to believe when looking at photos of her work, she never utilizes actual flowers in her designs. Every detail is crafted by hand.
Due to the time and attention that each cake requires, Narramore — who partners with her mom, Lisa, in crafting her sugar flowers, often working out of her grandmother’s house in eastern Kentucky — typically doesn’t accept more than eight or nine sugar flower cake orders per year. In recent months, she has been focusing on a new project: an electronic newsletter sent weekly via Substack that not only highlights background details on her flower-sculpting process, but also features content centering on gardening, cooking and entertaining, including recipes and videos. You can sign up to receive the newsletter at themischiefmaker.substack.com, and find more information about The Mischief Maker at www.mischiefmakercakes.com.
Check out Narramore's recipe for French Hot Chocolate, as published in our December 2023 magazines, here!
The Mischief Maker, Alex Narramore, recently took some time to answer a few questions about her background, process and inspiration for Smiley Pete reporter Celeste Lewis.
Your work is a delicious combination of art, gardening and baking. How did you put it all together and create your business? I was baking some cakes in high school and at the start of college. None were very good, but I was teaching myself the basics and how to bake. I took an art class in college that I loved, and I thought the art paired with the cakes I was making would make a great business, something that would let me indulge in the creative while also making money. This is something that my high school and college really pushed.
I was sitting at my mamaw's kitchen table in eastern Kentucky (Jenkins) and there was a book by [celebrated cake designer] Sylvia Weinstock on the table. My mom walked past and said, “If anyone was going to make it with those cakes, it'd be with those sugar flowers.” I thought it was a brilliant idea and took a sugar flower wedding cake order. I had no idea how to make them, but just knew it could be figured out. My mom jumped in to help me and has been helping and working side-by-side with me ever since. Full circle: Sylvia was judging an industry-led awards show years later [featuring one of my cakes] and called to ask the editor why she was being asked to judge a cake with real flowers on it. That being her life and what inspired us meant the world to us, especially because we learned as we went and were completely self-taught. I ended up winning best international wedding cake artist in the awards show she judged that year.
How do you begin a project? Tell me a little about your process. I usually begin a project with talking to a client. They have an initial base idea, a vibe or concept. I take that concept and start my own research, pulling anywhere between 15-100 images that I think will resonate with them. Often these are from sources I know and love, so I'm able to find them things I think they’ll love too but may not have found on their own.
What are some of your inspirations? Flowers — playing with flowers and making them in varying stages of bloom. Are they perfectly new blooms? Are they dying a bit? Are they wilted? Are they missing some petals? The stage of bloom a flower is in denotes the emotion it will have in the finished flower.
Color is another huge inspiration. I'm inspired by interesting color palettes. They could be from a painting, image or garment of clothing. I love taking complex color palettes and tying them together with just a few strings and bridges that make the overall visual work.
What’s a tool in your work you cannot live without? That's a hard question! I feel like I need many tools for baking and can often grab whatever to make it work for a sugar flower. However, it all is very tool-based! I'm tempted to go abstract and say determination.
Your Instagram is so beautiful and engaging. What is the role of social media in your success? Thank you for saying that! At first, I never wanted to show progress of anything I was doing, because I considered it unfinished. I was crazy and wrong. The beauty is often in the process. In one second, something beautiful you are working on can be touched with the wrong color and be different than it was a moment before. If you aren't documenting, you lose those special moments. I also don't think that people glancing at what appears to be a finished sugar flower cake could understand that they weren't real flowers or that they were made piece by piece.
I enjoy connecting with people and I have found that by sharing what I do, someone will message and say something they do in their life: music they're listening to, what they eat for dinner, how they grow something. I'm learning all the time. When you put more out there, you get more back. With the newsletter I've recently created (The Mischief Maker on Substack), each time I put out an article I hear something back. I wanted the newsletter to belong to us as a community as a way to be able to share ideas that would enhance our personal lives, including mine.
How do you manage work and life balance? My work is a huge part of my life. My life and what is going on in it inspires me to do my work creatively. It all feels so interconnected to me. The connections I make and have in my life, the food I eat, and the walks I take are my work or become my work. We can't pull one apart from the other.
Alex Narramore grows flowers in her downtown Lexington garden as well as at her family's home in Eastern Kentucky. The flowers serve as inspiration and models for her sugar flowers. Photo by Andrea Hutchinson