Gauting: Great cakes made to order – Starnberg

They are seductive works of art that Monika Wiekert and her two employees create in their bakery: cakes for all kinds of occasions. Whether it’s a wedding, christening, communion, birthday or even divorce – there’s always a reason to nibble. Speaking of birthdays. The 35-year-old knows from experience that children’s first birthdays are often celebrated in a big way these days. “It comes from the American.”

She has had the patisserie “Petite Amelie” with a café on Starnberger Straße in Gauting for eight years. It was named after her daughter Amelie, who was one year old at the time. “At first I was really happy to get out of the bakery,” she recalls. Now she is happy again in the bakery. It may play a role that she is now giving up the coffee house business and concentrating entirely on the ordering and delivery business.

From emergency nail to racer

What began as an emergency nail during the corona pandemic has long since made up the main part of their business: the cakes made to order. Because with the virus, sales collapsed sharply at the time. People hardly dared to leave the house. A meeting to chat over coffee and cake was absolutely taboo. During this time, the three confectioners switched to cake orders – it worked surprisingly quickly and surprisingly well.

And the ladies are creative. If a customer has no idea how his cake should be decorated, then imagination is required. However, many customers come with rough ideas, and many have found suggestions on the Internet. Sometimes a violin, sometimes a Mickey Mouse or a bouquet of flowers has to be created from sugar mass. There are fillings such as mango passion fruit cream, peanut caramel cream, chocolate mousse poppy seed cassis, raspberry cream or yoghurt lemon mousse. Then the couverture is usually used. Of course, cakes from the “Petite Amelie” house can also have several tiers.

On good days, 25 cake orders come

For a cake with a diameter of 26 centimetres, you have to pay an average of 50 euros. The cheapest cake costs 30 euros, while Wiekert sold the most expensive one for a whopping 1,000 euros. It was a five tier wedding cake. Today she gets two cake orders on bad days and 25 on good days. It means baking and stirring as much as you can. On the “good days,” as she calls it, the bakery is busy as early as six in the morning.

Wiekert is celebrating her 20th anniversary as a confectioner this year, and she has held the championship title since 2008. Your colleague Isabell König, 34, is also a champion. Wiekert trained them himself. And journeyman Anja Knoll, who is also 34 years old, “works at master level,” says the boss. The three are a well-established team. This will not change even after the café is closed. “We stay together”.

The team is now looking forward to their work becoming more predictable. You don’t always have to have six or seven cakes and tarts in the counter for customers to choose from. In the future, what is ordered will be baked. The fixed opening times are also no longer applicable. For Wiekert, this simply means more freedom and maybe a little more free time. She has two children together with her husband Andreas, who is head chef at the Bad Heilbrunn clinic: Amelie is nine years old and Paulina is two. She hopes to have more time for her two girls in the future. But one thing is clear to her: ordering also takes a lot of time. “We wouldn’t be able to do it without my mother,” she says. “Without the families in the background we wouldn’t have a chance.” And then Grandma comes in through the coffee house door and takes her little daughter Paulina from her home, who is only too happy to go for a stroll in Gauting with Grandma.

The bakery stays in the house

Before Corona, she still had six small tables in the store. Then they fell away. From then on, customers could only sit outside in the front garden on the thoroughfare. Not a particularly lucrative place. First of all, it’s noisy. “In Schwabing, people sit on the street,” says Wiekert, “not in Gauting.” Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the small café that she also ran in the Marienstift old people’s home has also been closed. “The conditions were too strict.”

In future, Wiekert is planning special campaigns on Saturdays – such as small assortments of macarons or eclairs. Promotions with special gingerbread creations are also planned during Advent. Customers can still pick up the cakes they have ordered in the current coffee house building, which belongs to Wiekert’s brother. The bakery also remains in the basement of the house. But the building itself is to be remodeled and the shop rented out again. Apartments are planned for the upper floors.

Oh yes, let me tell you a little secret: The favorite cake of the team of three at “Petite Amelie” is a banana cake with banana cream cheese cream.