At approximately 10 a.m., the smell of butter and vanilla looms as fresh cakes rise in the oven of a 9-month-old bakery tucked around the corner from Moe’s Southwest Grill on Magnolia Avenue and beside Alley Glass Company.
Twenty sticks of butter lie on the counter as they come to room temperature — the first step to starting any cake at Cakeitecture Bakery.
At the front of the bakery, an upright Aubie the Tiger cake stands at attention, one hand gesturing the same number on the tiger’s jersey, No. 1, while the other holds an Auburn flag.
Its creator, Carie Tindill, is no stranger to making Aubie cakes, or anything Auburn-related.
That’s because she runs Auburn’s first University-licensed bakery.
Opened in August 2015, Cakeitecture Bakery forged a partnership with the University’s Office of Trademark Management and Licensing to replicate Auburn University trademarks and logos such as Samford Hall, Aubie and the interlocking Auburn University logo.
Every time an Auburn-related pastry is sold, a portion of the profit is returned the University’s general scholarship fund, which Tindill said is a way of saying "thank you" to Auburn.
Jennifer Blackmon, director of the University’s Office of Trademark Management and Licensing, said being officially licensed by the University lends credibility and authenticity to the business.
“We appreciate the fact that Carie respects the Auburn brand and was more than willing to work with our licensing office,” Blackmon said in an email. “The royalties generated by AU licensees support student scholarships. What two better things can you imagine coming together — awesome cakes and supporting AU students.”
Home in the Pacific Northwest
The pink and brown sign that dangles above the bakery now was first familiar to another state.
Cakeitecture first opened about 2,700 miles across the country from Auburn in Olympia, Washington.
Tindill and her husband lived in the Evergreen State for five years, toting equipment to and from a rented space every day to run the business.
“Every bit that we made, we put right back into the business,” Tindill said.
However, two desires drew Tindill back to Alabama: She wanted to be closer to family as she raised her 2-year-old daughter, and she knew there were no licensed bakeries in Auburn.
“We knew that if we didn’t open this up, somebody else was going to do it, and we were going to kick ourselves for not being the ones who did it first,” Tindill said.
Architecture-baking fusion
The bakery’s name, a hybrid of the words cake and architecture, was coined by Tindill’s former professor Linda Ruth after Tindill used AutoCAD — a 2-D and 3-D computer-aided design software used to create blueprints and models — to draw a guitar cake for Ruth’s son during her time as an architecture student at Auburn.
Tindill graduated in 2005 with a bachelor’s degree in architecture and put her education to work on her cakes.
To this day, Tindill applies architecture techniques to make other cakes to scale, to fashion internal structures for cakes shaped like a yellow minion or the Batmobile and to show clients digital designs of their orders before they’re created.
Adobe Photoshop and constant use of color theory are other architecture skills she applies to her pastries, but constructing the scaffolding for sculpted cakes takes a different set of tools.
“We own a lot of power tools,” Tindill said. “To make Aubie, it takes five power tools. … That’s probably the most fun to me — the fact that we had to buy power tools in order to operate our bakery.”
The bakery even has its own 3-D printer to print custom cookie and fondant cutters in shapes ranging from Aubie’s head to a loaf of sandwich bread the size of a cracker.
A week ago, a Star Wars Millennium Falcon toy rested near the counter, a model for what will become an 18-inch cake replica of Han Solo’s ship.
“You just never know what to expect from week to week,” Tindill said. “I think that’s what I find most fun. It’s always different.”
From the President’s Mansion to Toomer’s Drugs
In less than a year, Tindill has baked anything from 1,400 cake pops for President Jay Gogue’s Christmas party to a 200-pound cake for the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine.
Though most customers call or email their specific orders, Tindill said the bakery has a consistent order at the start of the week: shortbread Aubie cookies for Toomer’s Drugs.
Kelly Oslick, the only other “cakitect,” heads cookie orders and decoration alongside helping with cake orders.
“I like that I feel like I’m using my education — that’s probably the best part,” Oslick said. “[Using] the things I learned as an art student like color theory and designing.”
A native of Washington, Oslick came to know the Tindills after she took a course from Tindill’s husband at The Evergreen State College in Olympia.
After Oslick visited The Plains during last spring’s A-Day, she trekked from the Pacific Northwest to the South, following Cakeitecture to where its name originated.
Now, Oslick stands in the shop she moved across the country to work in, shaving the rounded top of an orange velvet cake to make the layer flat.
Two tiers later, she has the shape of an Aubie-themed cake: the bottom tier covered in green fondant to mimic a football field and a top tier with an edible Aubie figurine.
Across the kitchen, Tindill starts the process of transforming stack of butter into soft, whipped buttercream, all while the air smelled of their progress.
“(The smell) kind of seeps into your skin,” Oslick joked.
Each week the variation of the orders keeps the bakery fun, and Tindill said she’s open to all types of orders.
“We don’t replicate cakes. … We always change it,” Tindill said. “We just don’t want to do the same thing over and over again. We’re not a grocery store cake shop. We always want to outdo ourselves from the time before.”
Do you like this story? The Plainsman doesn't accept money from tuition or student fees, and we don't charge a subscription fee. But you can donate to support The Plainsman.
