Your dad worked in metal, and one can see the appeal for the material in your own life too. Can you speak to this handed-down aesthetic, or perhaps how you interpret it, where it shows up in your life?
My dad
Stephane Rondel definitely gave me my love for metal. I love metal for its cold, brutalist, avant-gardist nature that is so incredibly timeless and elegant; my dream house would be made out of just metal, glass and concrete. I clearly have an affinity for hard, clean surfaces but not necessarily straight lines, my dad used curves a lot in his designs and I’ve brought that into my cake designs a lot. His designs celebrate the essential and extract the minimum in order to create something pretty futuristic and he always chose function even before form, although I think the two go beautifully hand in hand. I am lucky to have a few of his pieces in LA, but I wish I had more because they are my favourite things I own.
Ok let's talk about cakes - tell us about your latest kit releases, and where the inspiration for these hero flavours came from?
People normally associate a cake mix with something light, simple and classic, so I took that notion and added my spin to it. My hero flavors at first glance are not necessarily that out there, but if you look closer you’ll notice, for example, the dark chocolate one is flourless and comes with a sheet of edible gold leaf for decoration, the coconut raspberry one comes with freeze-dried lime leaf, which adds an intensely fragrant flavour. The ingredients my kits contain are all as clean as possible and truly are hand picked from only the best suppliers. The packaging is intentionally designed to look less like a food product and more like a cosmetic or beauty product, making them gift worthy and display worthy, which you must admit, the average Betty Croker is not!
