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Let Them Eat Cake: Leading baker in Hampton Roads readies for wedding season

The Bonbonnier in Ghent offers people a transportive experience as they enjoy the scratch-made offerings of Lisa Lain.
Credit: Joshua Fitzwater
Lain and assistant baker Sam working in The Bonbonnier kitchen.

“Some weekends can be ugly. We have a crap ton of cakes to do,” Lisa Lain, owner of The Bonbonnier told me recently while I interviewed her about getting ready for wedding season.

Lain said “crap” in a manner reminiscent of a 1970s TV mom so as to hammer home the point without uttering an expletive more unbecoming of a dignified woman such as herself.

Credit: Joshua Fitzwater
Cake decoration at The Bonbonnier. 

In choosing that word, the baker also solidified my suspicions from a year ago when I heard she was getting into the cake game: Demand would soon follow.

After all, since late 2014, she has been using old family recipes and a scratch cooking ethos to win over lovers of confections and smaller desserts, so why not cakes?

Credit: Joshua Fitzwater
Lisa Lain making candied apples in the kitchen of The Bonbonnier.

“The cake has to eat good,” Lain said.

Be it a three-layer, eight-inch cake or a two-layer, six-inch cake, taste is what Lain is focused on when making cake. As she explained to me: “No fondant. I want it to be pretty. But it has to eat well. That's what makes them walk away knowing it is worth it.”

Lain’s cakes, like the decor and vibe of her and husband Robert Lain’s store in Ghent, exude an old-fashioned quality that’s undeniable.

“We want people to come in and feel comfortable,” she said to me.

Credit: Joshua Fitzwater
Assistant baker Samantha Foran at The Bonbonnier.

And comforting is maybe the best way to describe the first time you try a slice of cake from The Bonbonnier.

When you bite your way through the all-natural buttercream icing and into one of Lain’s scratch-made red velvet, lemon, or carrot cakes, one cannot help but imagine being transported to a peaceful place, a simpler time embodied by the singular joy derived from tasting the craft of a skilled baker in her prime.

Credit: Joshua Fitzwater
Chocolate cherry cake and carrot cake by The Bonbonnier.    

ABOUT SOUTHERN GRIT MAGAZINE: Southern Grit Magazine is a food publication based in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia and aims to open an honest dialogue about food in the region. Each issue is themed, and highlights different food-related issues within that theme. Southern Grit features recipes and reviews as well as more creative content spinning off each theme.

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