The Community EditionA Walk Around Grand River Collegiate with Rochelle Williams
Rochelle Williams, aka The Dessert Artist, laid the foundation for her career in blending the science of baking with the artistry of design while attending Grand River Collegiate Institute (GRCI) in Kitchener. To tap into those memories, she chose the school grounds for our walk, where her high school art classes inspired her to explore different creative mediums, including food.
“[I]f I had a different upbringing, if society was different, I probably would have [gone] to school for visual art,” Williams said. “I’ve always had a passion for drawing and sculpting.”
After high school, Williams studied pastry and confectionery artistry at Humber College. There she learned fundamentals, but her classes lacked the advanced decorating that Williams was drawn to. So, she called on her visual arts background to take her work to the next level.
“My biggest passion is just making things look pretty, and I also just happen to love eating,” Williams said. “[G]ive me a medium and I’ll figure out how to make it work in my way.”
Our walk takes us around the fields where Williams played rugby while attending GRCI. We pass the gardens behind the portable classrooms and walk by the new building, added after Williams graduated.
While Williams takes great care and pride in her food artistry, she has no concerns about watching her works of art be consumed.
“I do want you to eat it, because it also tastes delicious. So, if you don’t eat it, I’m actually more offended,” Williams said. “To me, the taste is more important than the artistry.”
Williams never uses fondant in her designs, instead opting to sculpt with buttercream icing and explore the sculpting possibilities of modeling chocolate. She does all her decorating by hand, turning the repetition needed for large orders into a game to keep herself engaged and striving for the highest quality of presentation.
Since 2020, Williams has been investing in herself and her own business, first as The Painting Pastry Chef before rebranding in 2022 as The Dessert Artist. She continues to push her boundaries, introducing new products to her line like her Petite Patties, a spin on Jamaican patties.
“When I get an idea, I have a hard time not doing it if I think it’s a good one,” Williams said. “[O]ne day [I thought] it’d be cool to have a dessert Jamaican patty.”
Williams plays with traditional Jamaican flavours for her patties, including mango as a nod to her mother, who loves the fruit. She also offers a plantain patty and a rum-raisin patty in addition to the more traditional savoury offerings.
The expansion into patties is not just a business decision for Williams. It is also a celebration of her heritage and the importance of creating representation in her Black-centric designs.
“I saw a lack in the community that just needed to be addressed,” Williams said. “As a kid, I would have loved to see Black Santa, seen myself on a cookie…I can’t be the only one who wishes they had seen those things.”
The decision to create representation in her work came with some uncertainty for Williams, so she started by making both a Black and a White Santa cookie.
“I wasn’t sure how Black Santa was going to be perceived,” Williams said. “I quickly realized that if [the customer wasn’t] Black, people actually just weren’t sure if they were allowed to buy the Black one.”
To address these concerns, Williams has included on her website that customers “don’t need to be Black to enjoy a Black Santa cookie.” She now only creates Black Santa cookies to ensure representation in the market.
And while most customers appreciate the diversity in Williams’ work, she has received some negative responses, including people calling her work blasphemous, and White parents strongly preferring their children not choose a Black Santa cookie. When she asked a local business mentoring group how to market her culturally specific products to White customers, she was told to make products that would appeal to a mass market rather than focus on narrow cultural flavours.
It is part of these reactions that Williams understands the importance of community in the work that she does.
“I’m always like ‘community over competition’,” Williams said. “I want to help people. I want to build them up…I don’t want you to experience the same hardships. I want you to experience new hardships that we never experienced before, and we’ll manage those.”
Working out of the Cafe Clementina kitchen, Williams has strong connections with other local bakeries. She is interested in collaborating and enjoys following the journeys of other local bakers in person and on social media.
As we walked beyond the high school grounds, through Tecumseh Park and around the neighbourhood, Williams reflected on the role that nature plays in her life and work.
“I think the biggest thing I hate about my job is that I’m inside so much,” Williams said. “[N]ature doesn’t necessarily influence my work, but it definitely influences my mood.”
Williams enjoys working with clients to create fun, cool custom designs, and she is also thinking big when it comes to future challenges.
“I would love to make a full-body cake,” Williams said. “Life-sized and accurate to a tee.”
While Williams makes plans to create her dream full-size person cake, she will continue to blend artistry with pastry, seek out community, and ensure representation is present in the Region’s baked-good offerings.
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Humber Arboretum
