What to know
- BB Cafe & Bake Boutique says they received less than 24 hours of notice from one of Drake’s close friends to create a surprise “Iceman” cake inspired by the rapper’s viral ice block installation ahead of his album release.
- Co-owner and lead cake designer Parisa Nejad told Now Toronto the team faced several challenges, including sourcing specialty ingredients like iso malt to mimic ice and dealing with missing ice mould deliveries, but were able to deliver the cake before midnight.
- The cake featured vanilla sponge, chocolate with chocolate chunks, hazelnut whipped cream, and caramelized hazelnuts. Nejad said the bakery, which has previously made cakes for celebrities including Chris Bosh, The Weeknd, and Adam Sandler, is now hoping Drake shares the creation online.
This local Persian cafe apparently received an order to freeze Drake’s taste buds with an ice cake creation.
BB Cafe & Bake Boutique says they received a phone call on May 14 from one of Drake’s “closest friends,” requesting an icy cake in the form of the Toronto-born rapper’s famous ice block installation.
The biggest challenge? The cake was meant to be a surprise that would arrive by midnight, in time for the album release, giving the cafe less than 24 hours to deliver.
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But this isn’t the first celebrity cake BB Cafe & Bake Boutique has baked. Parisa Nejad, co-owner and lead custom cake designer, recalls making one for Chris Bosh, The Weeknd, some Raptors members, and Adam Sandler.
“It felt awesome… We knew that we just had to jump on the opportunity as soon as we heard it was for Drake; how big the albums were and how happy the whole city was,” she told Now Toronto.
BB Cafe & Bake Boutique has 16 years of experience in the cake studio, so the bakery was ready to tackle this challenge. However, many ingredients and their availability presented challenges.
Nejad explained she needed isomalt, which is essentially melted sugar that resembles ice, but the bakery only had a limited amount. It took lots of sourcing and reaching out to different suppliers to manage to scrap most of the ingredients.
But that’s not all. Nejad’s Amazon order delivered only two of the six ice molds needed, so she had to repeat the process.
Despite the time crunch and many odds against her favour, Nejad and her team of two other bakers managed to deliver on time.
The presentation is as grand as the installation, but what went into the ingredients?
The cake uses styrofoam for elevation, everything else is edible. Flavours were vanilla sponge cake, chocolate with chocolate chunks, and hazelnut whipped cream with caramelized hazelnuts.
But BB Cafe & Cake Boutique’s specialty is whipped cream, Nejad shared.
So that added another challenge, as whipped cream is not as stable as buttercream, icing, or frosting.
“It can’t sit at room temperature for hours and hours, so we really had to time it from the time of delivery,” she explained.
Nejad says she received positive feedback from Drake’s friend, but is anxiously waiting to receive a picture of Drake with the cake, or possibly see it on his Instagram page.
