Seven-year-old Adia Ingram of Sault Ste. Marie was recently awarded a freshly baked, sweet and colourful cake for her and her family to enjoy after submitting a winning drawing in a cake design contest organized for children by local baker Jeannette Orazietti.
Orazietti is the owner/operator of Sugar, a popular downtown bakery.
”We got an email from Jeannette letting Adia know she had won for her age category. Adia was beyond thrilled and we had a handful of her friends and her sister's friends over to enjoy the cake she won,” said Adia’s mother, Danae Ingram.
Ingram is Village Media’s Content Studio project manager.
“We love Sugar and go there for teacher gifts and Christmas cookies regularly and follow Jeannette’s accounts on Instagram," Ingram said. "When she announced the contest, I knew my girls would love to enter. Adia had created a few different designs before we actually submitted the winning one and spent quite a bit of time trying to decide on her favourite. It was pink with green vines and lots of little bugs."
“I felt really happy!" Adia told SooToday. "I didn't know if I would win so it was a great surprise. We had a movie night to watch the new Descendants movie and we all had a slice."
“Sometimes my mom buys cake mixes for me and I make them on my own except for the oven parts. My favourite thing to bake are brownies,” said Adia, who loves drawing and painting.
“It was really, really rewarding for me to see the look on her face when she came in to pick it up,” said baker Jeannette Orazietti.
The Adia-designed, Orazietti-baked cake had pink icing and was covered with images of butterflies, a bumble bee and green vines.
It had vanilla and chocolate chip filling.
“It was kind of cool to be able to take that little 2D sketch Adia made and turn it into a 3D cake. I absolutely just love the fact that she went into the detail with the greenery, with the vine and the leaves. Along with the little characters she attached on there it was really, really sweet. I felt like it was something my daughter would have drawn when she was little,” Orazietti said.
“When we got the email to say she had won, Adia felt so much pride and excitement but the moment also made for something really special between her and her sister Blythe. Blythe (who is nine) immediately mirrored the same excitement and was congratulating Adia, telling her how proud she was. They are your typical sisters and have their moments but we always talk about being a team and cheering each other on so it was really awesome to see her instantly celebrating with Adia,” Ingram said.
Baker Orazietti posted a series of Instagram stories as she made the cake and Adia enjoyed seeing it take shape.
“She didn't see the finished cake until we got to the bakery and was absolutely in love with it. It was a really fun experience all round,” Ingram said.
“Adia loves anything that involves arts and crafts. She does a lot of YouTube follow-along videos and then makes her own characters from them. Her room is decorated with several of those drawings. She also recently made her own drawing tutorial with her dad and shared it with her class before school let out for the summer,” Ingram added.
“I decided to have the cake design competition for the kids because I’m always trying to spark creativity in youth. When I was in high school they didn’t really push art as a career very much. I’m trying to get kids interested in art at a younger age so that they know that they can actually make a career out of it when they’re older apart from just having fun with it,” Orazietti said.
Noting that there are several cooking and baking shows on TV that parents and their children enjoy watching, Orazietti spread the word through social media that she was holding a cake design competition for two age groups.
Those age groups were six to 10 years of age and 11 to 14.
Adia was the winner in her age category.
Orazietti announced the competition in May, gave young artists/contestants plenty of time to perfect their designs, picked the winners in June and presented them with their award-winning cakes in July.
Orazietti said she received approximately 20 submissions.
This summer marked the first cake design competition for Orazietti, the baker stating she now intends to hold one for Sault youngsters every year.
Sugar opened at 765 Queen St. E. Unit 203 in 2023 and stemmed from the original Jeannette’s Custom Cakes that was based out of Orazietti’s home for several years.
“It’s more than baking to me,” Orazietti said of her profession and business.
“That’s how it started but now it’s become community involvement. We like to donate to the smaller teams and help other businesses. The title of business owner is a great title that I’m very, very proud to have. To see what we did from day one and see what we have now is a great feeling.”
