The Art of Cake, The Red Door & The Baker’s Son
With nearly a lifetime of experience in kitchens between them, Gloria Bednarz and her husband, Guenter Hess, took on The Art of Cake while raising a family of their own.
Twenty years ago, as the industry drifted toward convenience and bakers were being quietly replaced by boxed mixes, the two of them held onto a different belief: that there was still a customer out there who wanted the recipes they had spent years perfecting. Artistry was becoming something measured in shortcuts.
The Art of Cake was built in answer to that, on the simple principle that good food, made with the freshest ingredients, is what brings people together.
Long before The Art of Cake existed, there was a little girl in rural Alberta, watching her mother and grandmother bake bread and churn butter in their farm kitchen. She learned her mother’s methods as she grew, and they taught her something she still carries today.
“Food doesn’t need to be complicated to be meaningful,” Gloria shares. “It should be made with care, using good ingredients, and it should bring people together.” That early education is what led her, later, into the Commercial Cooking program at NAIT.
From there, the path wound through a handful of commercial kitchens before Gloria began selling her own recipes at the Farmers Market, where loyal customers followed and demand for custom cakes and pastries, weddings included, gave her creativity real room to grow.
A home-based kitchen was soon not enough. A rented commercial kitchen came next, then a storefront inside Edmonton’s City Centre Mall, where the dream of a proper sit-down café first took shape. A few years later, a vacant bay in Columbia Plaza became the place The Art of Cake would finally call home.
In 2017, The Art of Cake made its biggest transformation yet, growing out of its Farmers Market roots into the vintage-inspired bakery and café it is today, unlike anywhere else in Edmonton.
Inside, the dining room stays bright and airy, filled with an ever-growing collection of trinkets, treasures, and vintage furniture. Toward the back, the long room turns dark and moody by contrast, and yet somehow, through the same careful eye for detail, the two spaces feel like they belong to one another.
That long room houses The Red Door: a speakeasy-style cocktail bar, live music venue, and private event space that has quietly become the setting for some of life’s biggest celebrations, wedding ceremonies and receptions among them.
“There is nothing better than standing in the back, watching two people say ‘I do,’” Gloria says, “and knowing that a little piece of something I dreamed about will always be part of their story.”
Whether you come alone, with family, or with friends, there is a seat waiting for the full sensory experience. On Saturdays, the aroma turns to cinnamon buns fresh from the oven.
On Sundays, seats are reserved for High Tea, where the shop’s custom blend Crème De Earl Grey is poured alongside tiered stands of tea sandwiches, scones, house-made preserves, and clotted cream, with High Tea Take Away on offer for anyone who would rather enjoy it at home.
However you arrive, the route in is the same: through the long room, around the corner, and into the dining room, where the pastry case comes into focus. Six-inch cakes for any occasion, squares, and pastries fill the shelves, and at lunch, Edmonton’s best egg salad sandwich draws its own quiet following.
When the opportunity to expand came along, The Baker’s Son opened inside the Allin Clinic. The menu is smaller than the flagship’s, but it holds onto the crowd favourites.
Continued growth still comes back to the same fundamental principle it always has: it is for the people. None of it would mean much without the people who return.
“They give us friendships, memories, stories, and a place in their lives.”
One memory in particular still stays with Gloria: a customer who came in hoping to fulfill his mother’s final request, a treat from The Art of Cake. “It’s a reminder that sometimes, what we make is about so much more than cake,” she reflects. “It can be about comfort, memories, and sharing one last special moment with the people we love.”