Despite being nicknamed the "Cake Diva," Charmaine Jones doesn’t eat cake.
"When you’re around it everyday," Jones said last week, perched next to a traditional four-tier wedding confection covered with dozens of palatable pale pink tulips, "it just doesn’t appeal to you."
Nonetheless, when she describes her creations, Jones, who is the owner of the Hoboken-based company Isn’t That Special – Outrageous Cakes, speaks with the exuberance and affection of someone who not only loves to eat cake, but who takes tremendous pleasure in bestowing the elemental joys of her sugary treats on others as well.
"I make vanilla, chocolate, yellow, banana, lemon poppy seed, tangerine orange zest, old-fashioned pound cake, pink champagne cake and traditional German chocolate cake," she said. "They’re not exactly dietetic … they’re rich … but they’re goooood."
Charmaine Jones hasn’t always been enchanted by cake. In fact, the Cake Diva spent the first half of her career avoiding all things sweet and savory.
Born and raised in Gary, Ind., Jones’ mother was a classically trained French pastry chef and her father was an architect and artist. "My mother made me help her in the kitchen when I was a child," Jones said. "But when a parent makes you do something, you don’t want to do it."
In 1979, after earning a master’s degree in fine art at Loyola University in Chicago, Jones, who had developed into a striking, six-foot beauty, moved to New York to become a model. For 10 years, she paraded down runways around the world displaying the exalted fashions of designers like Karl Lagerfeld, Norma Kamali and Betsey Johnson. Needless to say, cake was not a top priority. "We used to hide behind telephone poles," Jones said. "And all you could see were our heads sticking out."
At the height of her career, Jones weighed 118 pounds, "and some clothes still didn’t fit!" she said, her voice dripping with incredulity as if, 10 years later, she is still stupefied by the situation. "I knew I had to get out of the business when one lady told me, ‘I liked you better when I could see your spine connecting.’ That’s when it hit me. I got tired of starving myself all of the time."
In the early ’90s, Jones traded in her designer garments and glamorous existence for a spatula and a studio in Hoboken, and, combining her mother’s recipes with her fathers aesthetics, she founded the Isn’t That Special – Outrageous Cakes business.
"When you’re a model, they don’t look at you as a human being; they look at you as a product," Jones said. "So I figured, if I could sell an image, I could sell a cake. Because everybody is always hungry – especially in the entertainment industry."
With the help of up to eight assistants, Jones makes between 80 and 90 cakes a year in styles ranging from "Extreme" to "Afrocentric" to "Novelty" to "Conceptual." She has made cakes for celebrities like Jay Leno, Michael Jordan, Susan Sarandon and Charles Oakley. She has even made a hamburger-shaped cake out of chocolate mousse and butter cream for Wendy’s owner Dave Thomas. But while she prides herself on her uncanny ability to supply the perfect cake for any celebration, her real forte is the wedding cake, which starts at $500.
"Besides the dress and the entertainment," she said, "the cake is one of the main parts of a wedding because it leaves the last impression. If you can’t remember it, then it’s not a memorable cake. And I’ve devoted my life to memorable cakes."
Some of her more unforgettable creations include a reproduction of the Taj Mahal, a facsimile of the Empire State Building, and a bust of Michael Jackson. Jones, a self-professed soap opera fanatic, has also crafted more than 20 cakes for daytime diversions like ABC’s All My Children, One Life to Live and The City.
"I’ve been watching All My Children since 1969," she said. "Erica Kane is my idol."
In the early ’90s, when the Cake Diva got word that her favorite couple on All My Children, Noah and Julia, were about to wed, she immediately began to vie for the job of cake baker. "It took me five meetings," she said. "And the first time they were supposed to get married, Noah was arrested at the altar – before they even performed their vows. With soap operas, the deal isn’t sealed until they’re at the reception."
Soap operas not only supply Jones with a paycheck, they also provide the perfect distraction from the painstaking task of handcrafting each flower. "The flowers take forever," she said. From the velvety petals to the chocolate bud center, Jones is likely to spend several eight-hour days toiling to achieve verisimilitude. "There is no shortcut," she said. "If there were, then everybody would be making cakes."
Visiting the Isn’t That Special – Outrageous Cake studio is not just an optical feast, it’s an aromatic one as well. Without ingesting even one calorie, you can almost taste the mellifluous melody of confectioner’s sugar and secret cake ingredients awhirl in the air. "Most of the recipes are my mother’s," she said. "That’s why they taste so good."
Despite her dedication to dessert, however, cake is not the only comestible that can arouse Jones’ ardor. In fact, when it comes to her own palate, the Cake Diva prefers lavish entrees at Amy Ruth’s, a soul food restaurant in Harlem.
"They have fried chicken, collard greens and candied yams, real comfort food," Jones said with a giggle. "You’re not going to lose any weight eating that food, but I can do that now. I don’t need to worry about someone trying to find my spine." q
Charmain Jones will open the doors to her "Isn’t That Special – Outrageous Cakes" studio (720 Monroe St.,) during Hoboken’s Artists Studio Tour on Sunday, Oct. 14 from noon to 6 p.m. For more information call 216-0123 or visit her web site at www.cakediva.com.