Custom-Designed Cakes at Mad Hatter Bakery

By: Lizzie Mollenkopf
Posted In: Entertainment

It is 3 a.m. on a Saturday morning, and while most people are snuggled up in bed, Audra Lalli’s day has only just begun. Lalli is busy mixing cookie dough and icing her specialty cakes in the lilac-painted kitchen at the Mad Hatter Bakery located at 64 Broadway St. in Newport.

Lalli, a graduate of the Johnson and Wales Culinary School, has owned the Mad Hatter Bakery for five-and-a-half years. Her specialties are cake-making, design and illustrations. She bakes about 30 cakes per week, but does not advertise at all. All of her customers come to her through word-of-mouth.

The typical cake-making process takes Lalli about 20 minutes plus baking and icing time. Lalli is able to take pictures that are on invitations, such as cartoon characters like Big Bird, Spiderman and Barney, or any other object that customers want on their cakes, and can then recreate them on the cakes. The character drawing usually takes about an hour-and-a-half extra. Lalli was not sure of her talents before she started making cakes. “I didn’t even know that I could frost a cake,” she says. “Now, I love to see the smile that customers get on their faces when they see my creations.”

Lalli also makes homemade vanilla butter cream frosting, which she says is a customer favorite. “I’m lucky because I found a good recipe for the icing,” she says. Lalli makes the icing using her special ingredients and then puts it into a metal mixer, which dates back to the 1940’s. On this day, Lalli is baking a large number of cookies for a wedding to be held this weekend. As she puts her batter into the other mixer and turns on the switch, nothing happens. Lalli runs immediately to the phone and calls her electrician. She laughs and says, “What a typical day in the life of a baker.”

The other baker in the store is Lou Mureddu, an advertising representative who retired after 36 years with the “Newport Daily News” and is now in his fourth year at the bakery. Mureddu comes in at 6:30 a.m. every morning and specializes in making brownies, croissants, tea breads and cookies. “He’s my second-hand man,” Lalli says.

Mureddu says that the success of the Mad Hatter Bakery is not just due to the fresh ingredients, delicious cakes and other baked goods, but is a credit to Lalli’s dedication and management style. “Audra’s a good boss who works hard at what she does,” he says.

Although cakes are the specialty of the Mad Hatter Bakery, the cookies, muffins, and other baked goods are very popular. The rounded glass cases are filled this week with cookies decorated with frosting, banana bread, scones, and cupcakes among many other things. Mureddu is in the back kitchen cutting out dough to make mini-apple and pumpkin pies. Along with Mureddu, the front-counter worker, Nicole Jones, a soon-to-be student at Johnson and Wales Culinary School, is drawing faces on the cookies with icing. “I’m getting practice working here, and Audra is really a great teacher,” Jones says. “Audra is an amazing person to work for and an even better baker.”

However, Lalli feels that the attention should be more focused on Mureddu. “Now there’s a great story,” she said. “He retired a few years ago and decided to do something that he loved.” Mureddu greatly enjoys putting some of his other skills to use. “I loved baking Italian desserts and decided to act upon my desire,” Mureddu said. Lalli pointed out another interesting fact: “Lou is a diabetic, which makes it even stranger that he works here.”

Lalli says that she separates her day into three categories. Between 3 a.m. and 4:30 a.m., she mixes the ingredients and makes the cookie dough and batter. She has everything in the oven by 5 a.m., garnishes her creations at 6 a.m., and by 6:30 a.m. has everything loaded into the car for delivery to places such as the Marriott and various bed-and-breakfasts around the Newport area.

After Lalli is done making her deliveries, around 7 a.m., she and Mureddu will work on the retail part of the store. This involves setting up the display cases, cleaning the tables, and making the storefront look clean and ready for the customers who will come in for their morning coffee and a croissant. The third part of the day is spent with specialty-customer orders.

Today, Lalli is short on cookie dough and dedicates her time to making more dough and trying to fix the broken mixer. During this portion of the day, Lalli will also work on her cakes and other orders that need to be completed in the next 24 hours.

In the front of the store Lalli keeps a photo album of all of the cakes that she has made and decorated. There are pictures of Spiderman cakes, fairy cakes, frog cakes, Winnie the Pooh, Barney, and birthday cakes decorated with flowers. “I get nervous when I decorate a cake because everything has to be perfect,” Lalli said. “I can’t have the kids hate the cake when one of Barney’s eyes is drawn wrong and ends up scaring the kids.”

Although the work of Lalli and Mureddu pays off when they get to see the smiles on their customers’ faces, Lalli still finds it hard to have time for herself. “I’m not a desk person; however, it does get hard,” she said. “I can’t take one day off. I even come in on Sundays when the regular store is closed.”

According to BakeryNetwork.com, small, family-owned bakeries are slowly being taken over by chain bakeries, which include KrispyKreme, Dunkin Donuts, and Panera Bread. “It’s hard when the bigger stores come in to town,” Lalli said. “We still have our everyday customers though.” Long hours, chain bakeries, and broken mixers do not dampen the spirits of Lalli and Mureddu. They say that hard work and dedication eventually pay off in the end. “Baking is a good thing, and working with Louis outweighs all of the setbacks,” Lalli said. “We have fun.”