A Los Angeles-based baker is making perfume-inspired cakes — and her creations are going viral.
Kassie Mendieta, a recipe developer and pastry cook, recently shared a video on TikTok showcasing one of her “best cakes” of 2024, which she says was inspired by the perfume Lira by Casamorati.
“So I’ve been making cakes that taste like perfume to prove my theory that […] what smells good together tastes good together,” Kassie began in the video’s voiceover.
“The way I’m doing that is by taking all of the edible scent notes of a perfume and infusing them into the components of my cakes,” she continued, before noting that Lira contains notes of “blood orange, lavender, rose, jasmine, cinnamon, bergamot, licorice, vanilla and caramel.”
“From here, I just let my brain start running through flavor scenarios and start to decide where each flavor might fit in best. Like should I do a bergamot oil chiffon or make a bergamot curd? Should the cake be filled with rose and jasmine pastry cream or just soaked in a floral milk tea?” she said.
Kassie noted that while “all these flavors” can sound “overwhelming,” the trick is that you “don’t actually want them all to shine.”
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“Like perfume, there are top, middle and base notes,” she explained, adding, “Like, sure, one or two may stand out more than the rest, but those other flavors are there to support and uplift the key notes to create something cohesive.”
As of January 30, the video has received over 550,000 likes and over 30,000 shares on TikTok, with platform users applauding Kassie’s concept.
“This is literally a PhD thesis ma’am omg this is genius,” wrote one commenter.
“This is probably the most original content I’ve ever seen. Good for you,” wrote another.
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Kassie worked in professional kitchens from 2015 to 2020 but was laid off from her job during the pandemic, according to her website ibakemistakes. From there, she became a “home-bakery owner turned free-lance recipe developer.”
“My work taps into the nostalgia of my own childhood paired with the flavors I’ve come to love during my journey,” she wrote on the site. “There is a boundless eternity of inspiration out there though, from music, art, fashion, invigorating conversation, the feelings I express and even suppress. Everything about being alive inspires the food I bake,” she added.
She also noted that one of her personal philosophies on flavor combinations entails, “What grows together, goes together,” — which is the theory that foods that grow in the same region naturally pair well together.
“Most importantly, to live in a world of flavor, you’ve got to break away from the world of ‘plain’ vanilla,” she concluded in her bio.
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