Zen and the art of buttercream frosting: Inside Philly’s cult cake-decorating class

One evening in June, I found myself wielding a piping bag and attempting to adorn the perimeter of a cake with even curls of buttercream. Around me, well-dressed women were masterfully sweeping swirls of frosting across their own cakes, pausing to snap photos and sip prosecco from coupes.

We were taking a decorating class led by New June Bakery’s Noelle Blizzard, the veritable queen of Philly’s buttercream scene. She’s known for intricate cakes decorated in the Lambeth style — a Victorian piping method that’s been enjoying a renaissance in recent years — and often finished with bows, glitter-dipped cherries, and flowers. As beautiful as New June’s cakes look, they taste even better: fluffy sponge infused with ingredients like cardamom and brown-butter fennel and sandwiched with sweet-but-not-too-sweet fillings, from bright jams to tahini caramel.

Like many start-up bakers, Blizzard’s business was born out of a pandemic baking habit. After following online tutorials from Claire Ptak of Violet Cakes, Blizzard began making cakes in her Fairmount kitchen. She started New June in 2021, and in 2022, left her 12-year marketing career behind to bake full-time. Now based out of a commercial kitchen in Kensington, Blizzard’s company has grown to a six-person team and hosts its own classes.

A relatively new offering, New June’s classes are already a hit. When the inaugural workshop in May sold out in six hours, Blizzard added more dates for the summer. “I was like, ‘It’s the middle of summer. There’s no way we’re going to fill these,’” she says of the classes. “Like, people are away, people have plans.” And people have made plans — to go to her classes. Blizzard has since added even more workshops at Bldg39 at the Arsenal in July and August — also sold out — and she’ll lead another at Anthropologie in Rittenhouse on July 18 (you guessed it: sold out), as well as two classes at Bloomsday on Sept. 9 and 30.

At $225, a spot isn’t cheap. But it’s not just a piping lesson that you’re paying for — it’s the entire New June experience. The cost includes a six-inch cake to decorate (participants choose their preferred flavor and color beforehand), plus welcome bubbly, snacks, sheet cake samples, and slices to go, along with a tote bag and stickers. Class goers also get emailed New June recipes as well as lists of baking equipment and reading materials.

I opted for a chocolate devil’s food cake with raspberry in a pistachio-green color to decorate, but I was reluctant to touch it with piping tools until after a solid hour of practicing on parchment paper. This followed a demonstration, led by Blizzard, at the start of class. Thankfully, cheat sheets with vintage piping methods had also been distributed on the long, styled table that we were seated around. Designed by the event-rental company Citrine, the tablescape matched New June’s aesthetic to a T: There were flowers in lilac-and-pink vases and impeccable display cakes dotted along a sage-green, scallop-trimmed runner, while everything down to the linen napkins fit the pastel color scheme.

It felt like a cool girls’ club, but with a welcoming vibe. Blizzard’s parents tended the bar, and her sister, Alexandra Wheatley, New June’s manager of operations, was on hand to help run the show. And there were the bakery’s three patient cake designers (including Blizzard), whom I called on more than I’d care to admit for assistance.

Throughout, I kept comparing my cake to those of my classmates and wondered how they were so good at this (one woman told me she had her own small baking business). But eventually, I stopped aiming for perfection and let my focus drift to the streams of buttercream as I loaded my cake with pink, green, and white frosting in pleated, concentric circles. I even threw on some ribbons, a cherry, and edible glitter.

Blizzard says she’s been surprised by “the amount of people coming who have absolutely no prior experience decorating a cake.” They’re “shocked,” she adds, when they realize that “this really elaborate, fancy, detail-oriented cake” is “actually pretty approachable.”

Decorating, the baker says, has its own appeal as a “really relaxing” and “fun challenge.” And for Blizzard, empowering others to try it feels “full circle,” she says. “The whole reason I had gotten into baking, and then opening New June, was baking as pandemic therapy.”

The first baking class Blizzard took was a virtual one from Erica Pais in 2021. Pais, the director of operations at Kismet Bagels, offers private workshops through her baking side project Paistries. She thinks people are drawn to baking and decorating classes for the community they create. “When you make something, you get to share it with people,” Pais says. “There’s nothing better than feeding someone and making their day with something that you also love.”

Nima Etemadi, cofounder and CEO of Cake Life Bake Shop — which recently hosted an NSFW cookie-decorating workshop — agrees that there’s a strong social element to such activities. “You might come with friends,” he says, “but you’re going to leave with more.”

Pais also thinks people go to classes like New June’s to interact with brands they admire. “Something that’s super cool about doing classes with someone like Noelle or Party Girl,” she says of Party Girl Bake Club’s Mallory Valvano — who also offers decorating workshops — is that “these are brands that people have really grown to love,” largely through social media.

For her part, Valvano says people embrace her classes as a creative outlet and something to do that isn’t drinking. “People are looking for different experiences other than sitting in a bar,” she says, adding that they crave “meaningful time that they’re spending with their friends and not being on their phone all the time.” Decorating in particular has such appeal that, for her next workshop, “Party Girl Fakes,” at Fleisher Art Memorial on Aug. 2, Valvano will take food out of the equation altogether and focus on faux cakes that are all about aesthetics.

“I think a lot of modern life is without opportunities for creative outlets, especially things that are fun and relatively light,” Etemadi says. At Cake Life’s class, he saw “people really tap into this almost childlike, silly, creative” part of themselves, with designs ranging from “the queerest sort of things” to a “Go Birds!” cookie. With baking, he says, “you’re putting in a lot of time and effort to make things look beautiful. But ultimately, the point is for them to be destroyed and consumed.”

Thankfully, the beauty is in the process — and I’m glad the professionals are letting us amateurs be part of it.