Serving the Sarasota Area.
While a student at the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago, Gail Thompson expected to pursue a career as an artist. And even though cakes have become her canvas and frosting's and sugar her medium, she probably did not expect that she would need a ladder to assemble a cake to celebrate Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's birthday or be making hundreds of cakes in the likeness of armadillos.
Thompson's Cakes Inc. is the culmination of a 30-year love of baking, instilled by her mother, grandmother and aunts and nurtured in various bakeries and shops.
Clients of the Gulf Gate store, according to Thompson, have dubbed her "queen of cakes" and are so faithful that they make up occasions, like a pet's birthday party, just for an excuse to order one of her cakes.
Meeting the challenges of special requests keeps things interesting as well, like the cake for a podiatrist who was opening a new practice. Shaped like a foot, "it had red toenails and a cast. It looked just like a real foot in a cast," said Thompson's daughter, Jamie.
A 6-foot-tall, 18-layer cake in honor of the late L. Ron Hubbard's birthday in Clearwater required three vans to deliver and a tall ladder to assemble it. John Travolta and Tom Cruise were among the celebrities who ate it. Thompson estimates she has made close to 300 red velvet armadillo-shaped cakes since the movie "Steel Magnolias" first came out. (Remember the groom's cake?)
But it is the wedding cakes, and especially the Italian cream cake handed down from her mother, that are the core of her business.
"I believe every bride deserves the cake of her dreams, and I work within their budget to make it magical," she said. Prices begin at $4 a slice and go up to about $15, depending on the size and details.
