- Conjurer's Kitchen makes gory, anatomically correct cakes for weddings, parties, and other special occasions.
- Insider spoke with Annabel de Vetten, the owner of the Birmingham, UK-based cake shop, about her wild confectionery creations that look like everything from peeled-back skulls to rotting corpses.
- De Vetten studied sculpture and taxidermy in university, but it wasn't until she made her own wedding cake that she considered baking professionally.
- De Vetten achieves the insane levels of detail using cocoa butter-based paints and multiple layers of modeling chocolate, fondant, and marzipan.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
Annabel de Vetten says that if she didn't bake cakes that look like rotting corpses and bloody, severed limbs, her friends would be seriously concerned.
"That's just who I am," de Vetten, owner of the Birmingham, UK-based bakery Conjurer's Kitchen, told Insider. "My friends and family would probably be really worried if I started making cute, pink cakes — they'd probably think I'd lost my mind!"
De Vetten developed an interest in anatomy as a child, but it wasn't until after she made her own wedding cake that she discovered her love of creative baking and sugar sculpting. These days, de Vetten makes gory, often anatomically correct cakes for weddings, parties, and other special occasions.
Baker Annabel De Vetten opened her cake shop Conjurer's Kitchen in Birmingham, UK, in 2012.
De Vetten says she began baking when she was a child, and later studied sculpture and taxidermy at university. However, she told Insider she hadn't made a cake until she created a magic-themed one for her own wedding when she got married in 2010.
"Our wedding cake was magic-themed and fairly plain really," she said. "I always say it's the least impressive but the most important. Without that one, there would be no Conjurer's Kitchen. But I'm seriously thinking of renewing our vows next year for our 10th anniversary and finally make us a proper kickass cake!"
De Vetten's years of studying sculpture and taxidermy have inspired her career.
This surgery cake, as with many of de Vetten's other pastries, was born out of her love of anatomy and the human form.
In most cases, de Vetten starts with a sketch or mental image of what she wants the cake to look like before she starts sculpting, she told Insider. Then, she builds the base and interior structure of the cake, and adds gory-looking details with modeling chocolate. Finally, she paints the cakes with a cocoa butter-based edible paint.
De Vetten, who was a fine-art painter at the time, says people began asking her to make custom cakes professionally after seeing her own wedding cake (not pictured). This led to her baking part-time.
De Vetten says she began baking professionally after people took notice of her wedding cake.
"I made our wedding cake and thought, 'Huh, that's kind of fun!'" she said. "More and more people started asking if I could make them cakes, and it sort of snowballed from there."
She has since made a number of scary-looking desserts, such as this "Hannibal"-inspired cake, titled "The Mason Verger" and modeled after the antagonist of the 1999 novel and 2001 film.
De Vetten was inspired to bake professionally full-time after she found balancing two careers challenging.
"I was a fine art painter and I was trying to do both, but it got to the point where I had to weigh out what excited me more — a cake order or an order for a painting," she explained. "I chose cake."
De Vetten said that although she never took classes in medicine, she used to "pour over anatomy books as a kid."
"Most of it is just self-taught, lots of visiting museums and reading," she told Insider.
Her interest in anatomy has clearly inspired cakes like this one, called "Anatomical Venus." Don't be put off by the missing chest on this cake — de Vetten assured us the intestines are delicious.
A typical cake usually takes around 30 hours to make from start to finish, according to de Vetten.
De Vetten said she has to work fast so that the ingredients don't melt, and sets up four fans at a time to keep her baking workshop cool. Additionally, she rests her hands on an ice pack to keep them cold when she's working with meltable materials.
This particular cake, simply called "Head," shows just how much effort de Vetten puts into the tiniest of details. She makes the intricate vein work and granular details using layers of modeling chocolate and fondant.
Although many of her cakes look gory, de Vetten promises it's all just dyed modeling chocolate.
De Vetten uses modeling chocolate to craft the intricate details in her cakes. The modeling chocolate she uses has a consistency and malleability similar to clay, she told Insider. She also uses marzipan and fondant for decoration, as you can see above in her cake, "Decomposing Dahlia," which resembles a rotting corpse.
De Vetten's favorite cake is this anatomically correct head set on a blue platform.
De Vetten says this is her favorite cake so far in her career because of its realistic features made with multiple layers of modeling chocolate.
De Vetten loves to put the taxidermy skills she learned in university into her work to make her cakes look realistic.
Because modeling chocolate is clay-like, de Vetten said it's the perfect medium for hiding seams in cakes and smoothing out surfaces.
For de Vetten, sugar is simply a different sculptural medium with which to make art.
To make the blood, she uses a variety of different recipes incorporating everything from corn syrup, cocoa, and food coloring, to reduced red wine and sweet peppercorn sauce.
De Vetten and her creepy confections — including this tongue-like cake that's studded with teeth and drips saliva — will soon be making their way to the US.
While she's currently based in the UK, fans of spooky confections can purchase pastries including chocolate crow skulls and diseased jawbones on her Etsy page before she relocates to Los Angeles in 2020 to open a bakery.
You can see more of de Vetten's baked creations on the Conjurer's Kitchen website.
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