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Candy-maker Pat Wheeler knows her sweets. Chocolate, truffles, candied popcorn, cake pops — you name it, she’ll tell you how to make it. But Wheeler shook her head at The Specialty Shop last Monday when asked about the secret behind a new chocolate-making technique she created.
“In my candy classes, I’ve made new candies that are kind of out there,” Wheeler said. “It is a new technique to New Mexico. I can’t tell yet, but it is going to be awesome.”
Wheeler works at The Specialty Shop, a small candy-and-cake-decorating shop where customers can buy decorating supplies and take candy-making and cake-decorating classes. The store opened in May of 1973. The original owners retired nine years ago, and that’s when Anna and Dave Adkins took over.
Wheeler was asked to work as a part-time employee at The Specialty Shop 17 years ago after taking a cake-decorating course at the shop. She said she took the course to help improve her work as a cake decorator at a local grocery bakery.
She said she’s had a fondness for baking since she was a child.
“I was raised on a farm in Kansas and if you didn’t make it, you didn’t eat it. And so I learned to bake and cook as a very young child — to bake cakes and cookies with my mother and my grandmother, cupcakes and things,” she said.
Wheeler is the manager of The Specialty Shop and has worked alongside the shop’s founder and the store’s current owners.
Wheeler said her passion for decorating cakes was reaffirmed after the passing of Harriet Mozley, the store founder, a number of years ago.
“When Harriet Mozley passed away, I told her son that as sad as we all were that day, that somewhere in Albuquerque a grandmother or someone made a cake for their grandchild that learned that skill from Harriet 30 or 40 years ago, and that’s why you do it,” she said. “It’s going to give memories to kids for their birthday, it’s going to be a birthday cake, it’s going to be a box of chocolate candy that comes every year for Christmas from somebody, and those things are remembered and looked forward to.”
The Specialty Shop is crammed with rows of colorful ribbons, assorted cake tins and bins of cake frosting and sprinkles. In one end of the store are rows of bagged handmade candy, and at the other are shelves of flowers, cake platforms and figurines to top wedding cakes.
Co-owner Anna Adkins has helped teach a few of the cake decorating courses at the shop since her arrival nine years ago, including a course about decorating wedding cakes, cupcakes and traditional cakes. Adkins is a certified cake decorator, having taken a Wilton Master Course in cake decorating in Chicago. Adkins said she teaches four traditional cake-decorating courses, ranging from an introductory course about leveling, filling and icing a cake to an advanced course in which the final project is creating a two-tiered cake that can be sold at any bakery.
“Some people will take all four courses — go from not even knowing how to even decorate a cake, to a multilayered cake, dealing with buttercream or gum paste flour,” Adkins said. “It’s a pretty wide span to progressing to do some pretty advanced techniques with just doing those four courses.”
Adkins said she has worked with more than 500 students since she began teaching at the shop. She said she is proud her work has helped students learn how to make cakes, whether they bake for friends or start a new business of their own.
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“One day I was walking into a cupcake store and I walked in just to check it out, and the lady at the front desk, the owner, she said, ‘You taught me everything I know … I was in your cake-decorating classes at The Specialty Shop, and through that I was able to start my business,’” she said. “That was a really humbling moment for me, and I felt really honored that I was able to help her along her journey, so she could be able to pursue her dream. I just felt a part of something big in her own life.”
Wheeler said she understands the impact a decorated cake can have on somebody. Wheeler said that in 1994, a seriously ill little girl who had recently had both of her legs removed asked for one thing for her birthday: a unicorn cake.
“It was the look on her face when she picked up her cake. And the managers had allowed me the extra time to do whatever I wanted to that cake, and that’s why I do what I do. That’s the memories that are created in this store,” she said.
