Delicious Designs

Confectionery Artist Really Takes the Cake

Joe Kernan
Posted 2/25/15

With her winning smile and pleasant manner, people who meet Andrea Soave Nadeau are not surprised to learn she makes her living making things that are pleasant to look at and easy to …

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Delicious Designs

Confectionery Artist Really Takes the Cake

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With her winning smile and pleasant manner, people who meet Andrea Soave Nadeau are not surprised to learn she makes her living making things that are pleasant to look at and easy to eat.

“With my different degrees, I guess you could call me a jack-of-all-trades, but I mostly like helping people and I love to cook, and to have people enjoy what I cook,” she said.

Nadeau is the owner of Carina e Dolce, a specialty bakery and custom cake shop in the Thornton neighborhood of Cranston. She is fresh off creating a special cake to celebrate an alternative Oscars ceremony at Veterans Memorial Hall in Providence called the Red Carpet Experience, put on by the Providence International Film Festival. The cake itself had visual references to Hollywood past and present, but as tempting as the “Oscars Cake” frosting looked, nobody got to eat it.

“The frosting is real but the cake is actually [plastic] foam,” she said. “Otherwise, it would not have held up. We had another cake for eating.”

For the most part, people actually do get to eat what Nadeau creates, whether they are chocolate-covered marshmallows or specially crafted shortcakes. As talented as she is, she’d rather be a pastry chef than an artist.

“Actually, my father wanted me to be an artist,” she said. “When I was younger I won a lot of awards for art in school, and he believed I could do that. There is still a lot of opportunity to express myself with baking, so we were both right.”

With degrees in psychology and communications, Nadeau says she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. She worked in a group home for a while, where she cooked for more people than usual. She always liked cooking, and when she saw that she was good at it her husband suggested she try doing it professionally. After a few years at the Grille on Main Street in East Greenwich, Andrea went to work at Camille’s on Federal Hill.

“I worked my way up in the kitchen,” she said. “When I was executive chef, there was some resentment. One of the cooks said, ‘Anyone who can’t lift and carry a full stockpot should not be my boss in the kitchen.’ So I lifted the stockpot and said, ‘There you go! Now, let’s get to work.’ At the time, I believe I was the youngest female executive chef in Rhode Island.”

Nadeau was chef de cuisine and pastry chef at Camille’s for more than 13 years, and that certainly paid her dues in the kitchen. She still has her day job as a nutritionist at the Cranston Senior Enrichment Center, but as a mother, wife and business owner she knows that life can lead her anywhere, just as her boss presenting her with a broken birthday cake led her to pastry-making.

“He came in with two pieces of a cake and a hopeless look on his face,” she said. “I put the pieces together and made it beautiful again. After that, people began to ask me to do things with pastry.”

Nadeau makes no secret about the tricks of the trade needed for special effects. The most common one is using material other than cake to support a design. They have always been in the pastry chef’s toolbox and are what allows such freedom of expression for the ambitious chef, like the use of support devices, such as plastic or wooden dowel rods, to keep layers from sinking into each other. Carved, angled layers are possible where cake cannot hold up. Polystyrene foam allows the whimsical effects Nadeau used for the Oscars cake, like making it look like parts of it will collapse at any minute. Principles of civil engineering have been introduced to the bakery.

If it weren’t for a broken foot, Nadeau may well have stayed at Camille’s, but she had foot surgery a couple of years ago and Camille’s did not hold the position for her while she recuperated. Nadeau opened Carina e Dolce at 1402 Plainfield Pike in Cranston about two years ago. She runs it more like an artist’s studio than a bakery. She’s open for walk-ins from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays. Other times, it’s by appointment only. She still likes her job at the senior center, but doesn’t expect to spend the rest of her career there. For now, the hours give her the freedom to build her business and bake her cakes.

She takes custom orders for weddings, birthdays and other special events. Within 48 hours, she can produce photo-ready cookies for a christening or an appropriate treat for any theme.

“I don’t like to do miniatures of things,” she said. “Trinity Rep was looking for a cake shaped like their building for their 50th anniversary, but I didn’t want to do that. I prefer an idea I can build on and use my imagination.”

She prefers to be given an idea or theme to work with, like a fantasy cake for the Oscars or a stack of pillows. A sit-down consultation is recommended for unusual projects.

But weddings are a big part of the business, and she is more than willing to uphold any tradition her clients may desire. Her shop, at the corner of Atwood Avenue and Plainfield Pike in Cranston, holds many examples of her fanciful creations. Antique-style cookies with fondant decorations could have easily appeared in high-end Victorian bakeries. Echoes of the Russian Royal Court, Fabergé eggs and custom-made jewelry are all suggested in flour, cakes and cookies. The whole enterprise has an improvised air that is more like a cluttered antique store, except that sugar and spice replace the smell of old wood and dust.

Carina e Dolce means “sweet and darling” in Italian, and it may well lose its air of tranquility in the future and become a busier place. Nadeau may decide to hold classes, or expand her product line, or use it as a studio for a show about pastry. Anything is possible, but it is not likely she will see the inside of a restaurant kitchen again, unless she’s just dropping by to see old friends.

Nadeau co-owns the business with her husband, who also opted out of the restaurant business. He does large machinery maintenance, but he’d be welcome if he decides or needs to be more active in the bakery.

“What I do know for sure is that I enjoy helping people and making them happy,” Andrea said, “so I think I’ll just keep rolling with that.”

Details: Carina E Dolce, 1402 Plainfield Pike, Cranston, (401) 301-1334, carinaedolce.com and on Facebook.

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