Saratoga News

Photograph by Robert Scheer

Lynn Magnoli, owner of Icing on the Cake, shows off some of the ingredients that make her baked goods so sinfully rich.

Icing on the Cake bakes a rich array of goodies

By Suzanne Cristallo

In 1985, Lynn Magnoli wept as her beloved Volkswagen bug was driven away by its new owner. But with the money she earned from its sale, she bought a mixer and a whole new career.

Today, Magnoli, 37, is celebrating the 12th anniversary of her bake shop, Icing on the Cake. The bakery, along with a wholesale kitchen she operates in Campbell with the help of 17 employees, is the culmination of three expansions within five years of opening.

In 1985, Magnoli left the ski shop where she had learned the retail business for eight years. With money she had saved, she leased an old house on N. Santa Cruz Avenue formerly used by Panetta's catering service. Her purpose was to bake for customers the way she had baked for family and friends since she was 5 years old.

On her first day of business, she made hundreds of cookies from recipes accumulated over the years and tested on fellow employees. She then formally opened her doors. Unfortunately, the doors opened to an alley in those days. With the help of her friends, however, she stood on N. Santa Cruz Avenue and offered plates of cookies to passersby, hoping to entice future customers.

"For four days each week, I'd sit there alone, waiting for people to come," she recalls. They did come, and they continue to come, drawn by the promise of sugar and butter, cream and chocolate. Globs of this and chunks of that. Dense and moist, crunchy and crumbling.

"We're sweetly killing people," she chuckles, reciting the menu of cakes, muffins, scones, brownies, pies and cookies she loves to bake. "Oh, we have a few fat-free items, but they're not what people want when they come in here."

Many customers come in after an aerobics session, she notes, rewarding themselves for their hard work, or muse over a book of cake decoration ideas for a special occasion.

"We can design anything you want. Just give us a picture, and we'll copy it," she says, explaining she does all of the wedding cakes herself. She designed the Santa Cruz Mountains' Mt. Hermon Road for the wedding cake of a couple who met on it, a temple in India, seascapes, old couples--everything from cutesy to whimsical.

"I never realized there was such a demand for art in baking--or that I could do it, until I tried," she says.

For the brave, Magnoli describes some items as "vein cloggers or heart attacks on plates." There is the Crumble Bee--a big glob of shortbread with chocolate chips and pecans that crumbles with one bite--and the Snicker Doodle, a buttery sugar cookie rolled in butter and cinnamon.

The most popular cakes are the dense and moist chocolate buttermilk and the chunky carrot cake--orange and earth-toned and smeared with cream cheese icing.

"Pie season is coming up," she says. "Each time I make one, I have to stop and look. They're so flaky and beautiful!"

Magnoli celebrates her 12th anniversary at her shop on Sept. 24 with free cake and coffee from 7 to 10 p.m.

Icing on the Cake, 223 N. Santa Cruz Ave., Los Gatos. Open Mon., 9 a.m.-4 p.m., Tues.- Sat., 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Closed Sun. 354-2464.

[ Back to Contents Page | Saratoga News Home Page | Archives ]