Anna Puchalski
Anna is a classically trained sculptor and illustrator who started her career in cake decorating with Ron Ben Israel in 2000. Since then she has worked for a number of well known cake studios in the New York area doing complex sugar work and design. Her specialties include freehand painting, figurative sculpture and color theory. As a teacher she has worked primarily with trained chefs and professionals, providing instruction from the basics of sugar work to complex techniques. Realistic gum paste flowers and foliage are a particular area of expertise and she is always seeking to improve her methods and make them easier to teach.
She has worked at Pink Cake Box since 2008, where she is currently the senior sugar artist.
Anna's Class Reviews
As food tourism and general gourmet culture become more mainstream, having a an event cake that is simply pretty no longer fits the bill. Neither can one expect sophisticated customers to be happy with the old style buttercream decorated cake one might cringe at when happening upon wedding pictures from the 1980s. Luckily, there are a …Continue Reading
Amy Noelle’s sugar flower class is aimed at the amateur or inexperienced sugar artist, as are many other classes available on line. The hook here is she has picked a selection of flowers that hit the current trends. This shortens the curve between learning make (general) flowers and learning how to make what you need …Continue Reading
Internet education sites are all the rage so it’s not a surprise to find a cake-centric dedicated destination. However, CakeMade consists almost exclusively of edgy, modern designers with an array of new and innovative techniques to teach. I started out with Liz Marek’s Rustic Wedding Cake Trends class. She’s a fantastic talent and owner of …Continue Reading
Anna's Tutorials
Today I sat down to design a new cutter and a new class for our students here at PCB-U. I like to do a full test run before I make vector files and send them off to be turned in to an acrylic cutter for fondant or gum paste. And one way for me to …Continue Reading
Need a quick but cute holiday party treat? Any cupcake can easily become jolly Ol’ Saint Nick! Heads up! Prefer video format? Check out the same tutorial in video here.) 1First, assemble everything you’ll need for the project so you have it close at hand. If you are making many Santas at once, you can …Continue Reading
In this free tutorial, we guide you through the step-by-step process on how to create a Mermaid cookie!
Anna's Recipes
A modified Tres Leche cake frosting recipe (less butter, less sugar, more dulce) that I used to fill my Hello Kitty cookies and macarons (pictured on right) for this project.
Anna's Projects
Classic Roadster Car Cake created from Mike McCarey Classic Car Class.
This figure, affectionately called Flora the Woodland Fairy, is adapted from Carlos Lichetti’s Animation in Sugar book. I like fantasy creatures to start with and she’s an interesting design.
Anna’s bunny in a teacup project from Carlos Carlos Lichetti’s “How to make a bunny cake topper” class!
Anna's Cake Corner Posts
New and Exciting Tools
Just six months ago, if I wanted to make a houndstooth effect on a cake I would probably be torn between spending hours upon hours painting it by hand or paneling it with wafer paper or icing image prints. Neither ever gives me quite the satisfying results that these new molds do. Marvelous Molds is …Continue Reading
Trouble Shooting Sugar Flowers
I can only imagine that this will prove to be an ongoing conversation. I’ve touched on some of this before and expect to do so again. Not every client wants cultured roses, hydrangea and cool greens. As a matter of fact, more and more often florists are thinking outside the box in an effort to …Continue Reading
Painting Cakes (a recurring theme)
I talk a lot about painting on cakes. Partially because of my arts background, I know — but also because it’s a versatile way to add detail to a simple project and much easier than it appears. We also do it constantly here in the shop!! The obvious approach is to use the cake as …Continue Reading