Last Thursday marked the release of a short film promoting ‘The Caker’, Jordan Rondel’s flourishing baking business. Now operating out of the commercial kitchen at Eightthirty Café and fulfilling orders for a wide variety of private celebrations and commercial events, the popularity of Jordan’s sweet morsels stands testament to the fact that a good party is nothing without cake.

The Caker’s creations have been particularly popular with the fashion crowd; her cakes and miniature creations have become commonplace at some of Auckland’s most stylish events. Considering the attendees are usually better known for huddling around the drinks table than consuming sugary treats, this might be considered an unexpected partnership. Yet her creations go down well – extremely well – at these events, perhaps because the cakes look as good as they taste. Jordan admits to having a mind to aesthetics when creating recipes – her recent custom-made cakes for Lonely Hearts were inspired by a floral fabric from the upcoming Spring collection, both visually and in terms of the flavours incorporated. However she emphasises that it is always more important to her that a cake tastes good than that it looks pretty – unlike those ubiquitous, overly decorated but ultimately bland cupcakes which we all know so well. Like all good ‘home baking’, there is a calculated imperfection to all of her creations; icing oozes from the tops of cupcakes and sponge layers are stacked ever-so-slightly haphazardly between licks of jam.

As with so many of the best creative products, the new short film is a collaboration between several inspired minds close to Jordan. Produced by Laura Barton and displaying an extravagance and attention to detail typical of director Calypso Paoli’s photographic work, the piece is as much a work of art in itself as an advertisement. With clothing supplied by Stolen Girlfriends’ Club, jewellery from Zoe and Morgan and cupcake-painted nails by Kylie McKenzie of Black Moon Nails, the styling of the film threatens, but never quite succeeds, to upstage The Caker’s tableau of cakes and sweets, fit for any Queen of Versailles.

Here is the film: