Corpus Christi – Most days, you’ll find Dusty Sinclair in her Corpus Christi home carefully crafting her creative baked goods. “It’s a lot of work, and everything’s made from scratch,” said Dusty.
While the flour, sugar, and eggs are the basic ingredients, she goes above and beyond when it comes making her cakes stand out from the flock. “I’m known for doing 3D hyper realistic animal and fish themed cakes, but I do wedding cakes as well,” said Dusty.
While this sweet treat looks like a duck, seems like it could walk like a duck, and you’re definitely waiting for it to quack like a duck, it really is just a cake. “Layers of cake smothered in a buttercream frosting and then the outside layer is actually a scratch-made modeling chocolate,” said Dusty. “So, it’s chocolate per se instead of fondant, which tastes so much better, and it’s really cool to work with. It’s kind of like a clay in a way, the texture of it, whenever you’re working with it, and then it dries hard.”
While she has the heart of a hunter, Dusty has always had a soft spot for making sweets for as long as she can remember. “I always knew since I was a little girl, I would say probably three, I knew I wanted to be a baker of some sort,” Dusty recalled. “I remember talking to my grandmother about it, my Grammy, I feel like she’s the one who inspired me the most whenever I was younger, to do that. So baking with her in the kitchen and stuff like that, and literally in my high school yearbook, it literally says I wanted to be an art pastry chef when I grow up or whatever, and I wouldn’t say I’m not that, but I am that in a way. To me, I am that now.”
Dusty started a cookie business in 2014, but it wasn’t till 2020 that she started experimenting with making cakes that look like wild game. “I’m actually self-taught,” said Dusty. “I’ve never had a cake class before in my life.”
From fish to fowl to deer with some fine racks, Dusty has created just about every creature on God’s green earth. “Oh, I’ve done so many,” said Dusty. “Lots of deer, axes, dorados, marlins, sailfish and bass, redfish, trout, flounder, blackbuck, hogs, javelinas, turkeys, dove, quail, rattlesnakes.” Wow. “A lot of different things.”
Making these cakes is one thing, but getting them where they need to go is a whole other ordeal. “I’ve had people from another country come in and fly in and pick up cakes,” said Dusty. “Yeah, it’s crazy. They’ll have private planes that the cakes can ride back on. I’ve had people hire drivers from different states that don’t feel like driving to pick up their cakes, so they’ll hire somebody to come do it.”
Considering the size of some of these cakes, it takes a whole lot of planning to ensure they arrive in one piece. “One time I did a six-foot blue marlin and it’s 3D, hyper realistic, so it’s upright and you see both sides of the marlin, and it was six foot,” said Dusty. “So it’s not only long and awkward to go through doors and stuff, but whenever it’s driving, it’s on a board that’s long and skinny like itself. So it’s like this the whole time, and I’m like, ‘Oh, no.’”
The cakes are popular with grooms. They do say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but apparently these cakes will get him to the altar. “’The reason why we get married is so we can have your cakes at our wedding.’ I’m like, ‘Stop being silly,’” said Dusty. “They’re like, ‘No, really? We had to reschedule our wedding just so we could have one of your cakes at our wedding.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, my goodness guys.’”
When it comes to the wedding party, people have to be reminded to keep their hands to themselves. “People will literally have signs made that say, ‘Do not touch. This is a cake,’ because you’ll see people over there touching and everything,” said Dusty. “Like, don’t touch that. That’s the cake. That’s not a piece of taxidermy just sitting there on the table. It’s cake.”
You might think that it’d be painful to watch these works of art get sliced and served, but Dusty knows that’s the whole point of a cake. “It does not make me hurt,” said Dusty. “That’s my number one thing that customers say to me, ‘I don’t know how we’re going to cut into this cake. We can’t cut into it. It’s too beautiful.’ I’m like, ‘You paid a lot of money for that cake. You eat it. Don’t waste it.’”
Dusty applies the same sweet feelings to her talent, making sure not to waste a single drop of her unreal ability to make cakes that look like they belong in the wild. “I feel like this is what God has put me on earth to do,” said Dusty. “It really warms my heart. I’m so, so thankful and so blessed for the amount of people that let me know that I’m doing a great job. I love it.”