Meet Pamela Pastor | Cake decorator and Industrial Designer.

We had the good fortune of connecting with Pamela Pastor and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Pamela, can you tell us more about your background and the role it’s played in shaping who you are today?
I am from Argentina, Buenos Aires from a city, called La Plata.
When I was a little girl, my Mom used to make us our birthday cakes. She also kept doing cakes as a second job, to keep being recommended. After some time she had to give up her passion, to focus on her daily work and taking care of my brother and myself, However she never stopped making our family cakes.
I always liked crafts, whenever something became fashionable, like making candles, necklaces or bracelets, I always made it to give them as gifts to my family and friends.
Once I finished High School, and after taking a vocational test and having my orientation on design, I decided to enroll in Industrial Design, although I wouldn’t know if this decision would help me with my real passion.
It took me 6 years to graduate. I loved every moment I spent at the university. After my graduation, I got my first job for a company that designed watches. My job was beautiful, I learned a lot the first year, the second year I felt in my comfort zone but unfortunately in the third year I started to get bored with what I was doing, since I was designing a watch and I only saw it come true after 6 months.
One day I found some girls on Instagram who used to decorat cakes and I felt in love with their work, since it reminded me of my Mum’s Cakes, but the techniques had definitely improved a lot and I was very curious on how to do it. It was back then when I decided to start making decorated treats to give them to my friends and family, since that was something that I always felt attracted to, by that new experience and the way it could be achieved. And what I never imagined happened! The art cake decoration became my passion, thinking about a design and being able to see it come true in just 3 days became an addiction for me. I opened an Instagram account, I asked all my friends in each post to thank me for what I had done to them as if they were my clients, and that’s how my story began. I started with an order of cupcakes for a Baby Shower and now I’m teaching classes around the world!
And how long ago did that happen? 12 years ago, since I started with this passion. At the beginning many people, questioned me about how I was going to quit my job as an industrial designer to simply Cake maker, until I understood that the 6 years of university had given to me a lot of skills to be able to offer to other cakes makers, a professional approach, contributing from knowledge, designing tools for my students and helping them to grow and take their jobs to another dimension.
Thus, with a lot of effort and dedication, I merged my studies with a branch of cake decoration that I am passionate about: THE ART OF CAKES WITH STRUCTURE, managing to transfer a 2D plane to an edible 3D volume.
Today my main focus is to train cake decorators from around the world, teaching from my place as a designer, providing tools and resources so they can make their own creations and grow in this sweet world to another level.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Within the world of cake decoration, which there are many techniques to develop, I focused myself on the one that I felt most identified with and was most related to my profession, which was cakes with structure.
What is a cake with structure? It is creating a cake that can be a standing or moving character, or it can be defying gravity like the classic ones that have a slice of pizza in the air, or it can also be many cakes one on top of the other. All these designs always need an internal structure that is made with wood and threaded rods, to be able to support them and make them stable.
However at the beginning I didn’t know those types cakes existed! I started making conventional cylindrical cakes, until I started with the structures and it was a one-way road.
My first design was a standing ice cream, and at that time in my country no one made that style of cakes, so all my followers went crazy, and obviously the first reaction was that they wanted to learn how to make them! That was my first opportunity to teach classes in many states along my country, Argentina.
But obviously my necessity to create even harder, took me to another level: after several weeks of thinking and thinking about the design, after a live event in which more than 4,000 people saw me and I had a really frustration experience because I had been bulling about my hairstyle, that was the first time that it was exposed to a lot of people. So I become resilience born again, kept working, and created GAMES, a project that included pieces from the 90s such as the Simón that had lights, the Mario tube, the Pac Man and the Rubik’s cube with movement. This project took me outside my country for the first time to teach, and my Mexican friends were the first to trust in me. This project took me a whole month to do it!!! It wasn’t something I could create easily, it was a design that I had to take apart and re do it several times until I achieved the result I wanted.
And that’s how I began to project and challenge myself daily, creating new designs that I later taught in classes, until the pandemic arrived and everything changed… in the pandemic I started with a project that I had pending, as a designer, I couldn’t get out of my head. , which was to make products for cake decoration. By then I already had 3 products and we made custom cutters, but I wanted to go even further. So it was that the first 15 days of confinement, I spent my time making stencils on the computer, I think I made about 100 hahahaha
With my savings, I bought my first laser cutting machine to be able to make them. We created a website, we published everything and I spent practically the entire pandemic uploading content to networks about my products. I also started to do On line classes, which worked super well! And here I come when suddenly my life changed… that necessity to continue teaching allowed me to create a Specialization in Cakes with Structure, a virtual mode, where I could show my knowledge from scratch, introducing students to design theory, teaching them to use computer programs to create their own structures and with projects as examples so that they can create without limits. But the specialization had to culminate with a star project, and I decided to make one of Mario Bross coming out of the box, grabbing a star with light, and on one side the cube with the moving mushroom. Not only was the specialization a success, but this project also took me to travel to 11 countries for about a year and a half! Was I afraid? Yes, of course I was, a lot! It was a whole new experience for me, going back to teaching in-person classes that I had stopped due to the pandemic, giving them in a country that was not mine, with materials that were not the ones I usually work with, and even classes in other languages! But I did it! The first destination was Paris, but many more followed that! Barcelona, Chile, Venezuela, Peru, Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala, among others!
And if you ask me if I ever imagined everything I was going to experience, the answer is no! When I started in this world I only thought that I would have my workshop and make cakes to sell, without knowing the world that was behind that. What I do know is that beyond achieving my first goal quickly, I always knew that I wanted to be even better every day, that I wanted to create techniques, do projects that take me out of my comfort zone and be able to continue surprising everyone and surprising myself with what I could achieve with edible art.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
My city, La Plata, is a small city but well known as a student city, since here are many prestigious Universities. So I studied industrial design where I was born, but my friends that I met from university did not, they are from Bahia Blanca and Necochea,( around 5 hours driving) and we immediately became friends when we met.
If I have to choose the best moments of my life, it definitely had been the 6 years of university that we shared. Every corner of the city makes reminds me unforgettable moments, eternal walks through my city, which is full of trees, carrying models or the drawing board. Also every 7 blocks there is a park, and every time we had free time, we would go hang out. As a funny story, One day while we were waiting to get a note, we all fell asleep lying on the grass at one of those parks haha!
If I really had to choose to go back to any moment in my life it would be that one. I don’t regret anything I experienced afterwards. I have proudly chosen the path that took me to be the way I am today. Because thanks to the university and the beautiful group of friends that we formed, I took with me all the knowledge I have today so, that my love for cake decoration and design is infinite.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Of course! I feel very grateful to all of those who have supported me to be in the place where I am today, in fact it is because of them.
Firstly, to my family and friends, who always trusted me and my abilities to be able to grow day by day, but especially to my dad Omar who have gave me the space and gave me part of his own house so I could work in. HE had also helped me to set up my workshop to teach my classes, even nowadays accompanies me and helps me in the financial part of my entrepreneurship.
I also would like to thank my first teacher in the world of structures, Xavier Garcia Laparra, who opened my eyes and made me understand and accept that everything I had studied at the university helped me much more than what I thought to develop this art. I took my first structured cake class with Him.
I would also like to thank the brands that have trusted me for many years, the first is Parpen, which opened the doors for me to show my first demonstration surrounded by professionals of excellence in my country, secondly to Pasta Ballina, which is one of the most important fondant Company which has trusted me for more than 5 years and with which we have done work for exhibitions more than 1 and a half meters high.
Last but not least, I want to thank my ex-partner Nicolás, part of who I am today is because of Him. He’s been accompanied me and continues being part of this path, we spent many nights sleepless, long days of working hard, and loads of tears when something didn’t turn out the way we expected, frustration, but also fun, trips, and happiness together.
Thank you all for being part of my life, I will always be grateful.

Website: https://www.ruphas.com.ar/

Instagram: @pamelapastorruphas

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYpL1JMD9FsMkKjBnxQW9VQ

Image Credits
Julia Veiga