Cake baking brings local businessman sweet success

By Jomay Steen, Journal staff | Wednesday, April 25, 2007

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RAPID CITY -- Practice makes perfect when it comes to baking and decorating cakes, say area cake professionals. But, they say, even your mistakes are edible and tasty.

For more than half a century, Ray Bullinger has been elbow-deep into baked goods. The Rapid City man retired in 1998 from his downtown business, Ray’s Bakery, after 38 years. During his tenure as master baker, Bullinger, now 71, says he was particularly proud of the wedding cakes he produced.

“I made all of my own wedding cakes. I made them all by myself, all of the time,” he said.

Sandy Rasmussen of Faith has decorated cakes for 28 years.

Of the hundreds of cakes she has created for weddings, anniversaries and other special occasions, Rasmussen, 59, enjoys making children’s birthday cakes the best.

She often bakes and decorates two cakes for the lucky birthday child.

“I’ll bake a big cake for the party and a small one for the 1-year-olds,” Rasmussen said recently.

With Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, spring graduations, weddings, baby showers and bridal showers coming up quickly from now through the start of summer, these two retired bakers offer tips and recipes to make a cake like the professionals.

Rasmussen’s twin birthday cakes may have an identical theme and flavor, but they have different purposes. A large cake is baked for eating and the smaller one for entertaining.

“You can turn the kids lose with their own cakes and let them destroy it,” she said with a laugh. “Some parents don’t like it.”

The 6-inch cake pan, part of the set she uses for making wedding cakes, yields four serving, enough for a toddler’s tummy and then some.

Using the cakes as her canvas, Rasmussen mixes up a buttercream icing to express her artistic prowess. In 1979, Rasmussen started her cake decorating business with a basic Wilton Cake Book. She has since modified her icing and cake recipes, adding pinches of this or that until she found the perfect taste and texture.

“You just keep adding things until it feels right and looks good,” she said.

On her pantry shelf is clear vanilla, butter flavoring n which she uses judiciously, a high-quality confectioner’s sugar and Crisco white shortening. All the ingredients for a great pallet of frosting, she says.

She also is careful when adding the butter flavoring because it may result in the frosting having a yellow tint. Sifting the frosting’s powdered sugar helps it flow through the decorating tube easily and freely, too.

“It works the best,” she said of her ingredients.

As a wedding gift to his granddaughter Stephanie, Bullinger will once more get out his baking pans, utensils and frosting tips in August to design her special cake.

Using his buttercream frosting, he will create the lacework, scrolls, roses and rosebuds that will make the cake not only a delicious dessert, but an elegant centerpiece.

“I have had the privilege of making all of my grandkids’ wedding cakes,” he said.

The Mandan, N.D., native began his career at his hometown bakery about two blocks from where his family lived. At age 15, Bullinger said he became interested in baking. The following year, he arrived at the bakery at 10 p.m. and worked all through the night to make the hundreds of fresh baked goods needed to supply the shop for the next day’s customers.

“We’d get done about 8 in the morning. In Mandan, the little bakeries produced a lot of merchandise,” Bullinger recalls.

It was a trade that he embraced and a business that led him away from his North Dakota hometown. Leaving school at 17, Bullinger set out to learn about the business as well as work hard.

“I knew if I didn’t finish school, I would have to have a trade. This was it,” he said.

His bosses were impressed by his business sense and his dedication. They soon sent the then-20-year-old Bullinger to Mason City, Iowa, to operate and manage the company’s bakery there. He eventually was sent to a larger baker in Rapid City, where he later bought the bakery business and building in 1972.

By the time Bullinger retired, he employed 13 to 19 bakers and workers to supply the weekly orders of 3,000 dozen cookies, 12,000 buns along with cakes and other baked goods.

He also launched the baking careers of eight people including his son, Ricky Ray, who works in an Omaha bakery.

“It’s been an interesting life…,” Bullinger said.

See video of Bullinger in action by clicking here.

Contact Jomay Steen at 394-8418 or jomay.steen@rapidcityjournal.com