ELKO — Snow is not the only thing drifting through the air as the smell of sweets and homemade bread wafts onto Idaho Street from Let Them Eat Cake bakery.

The bakery, which moved to a new location in June, is busy filling orders tailored for the holiday season.

Although the bakery is mainly made-to-order, more pies and cakes will be readily available as Christmas draws near.

Owner Trinity Steffensen will make almost any baked goods that customers want, including gluten-free delights.

Steffensen, who went to a French cooking school, makes cheesecakes, sugar cookies, tiramisu, pies, tarts, cobblers, brie cheese croissants, turnovers and other items to satisfy the most intense sweet tooth.

Every day the bakery has cookies and cupcakes for purchase. However, they will soon start providing their holiday flavors. Pumpkin cupcakes and vanilla bean cupcakes fly off the shelves as the season changes.

Specifically for Christmas, Steffensen said she will start to make peppermint and eggnog cupcakes.

“I will definitely go with the holidays,” Steffensen said.

For customers who special-order pies, Steffensen will bake them in her own pie pan. Her husband, Michael, jokingly said this is a way for people to make them look as if they were homemade and not bought at a bakery.

Gift boxes are also available for the baked goods.

Shawn Lowe also will be making homemade bread at the bakery. Lowe has had a strong presence at the bakery since July and she, too, is tailoring her baked creations for the holidays.

Lowe will be baking holiday rolls as well as pumpernickel, cranberry and blueberry breads in light of the holiday season. In addition, she will bake traditional German bread called stollen, as well as the Italian sweet bread called panettone.

“It’s a lot of fun and you can test out new stuff,” Lowe said.

Steffenson’s baked goods can be found scattered throughout Elko.

“We’ll do desserts for anyone who needs it,” Steffensen said.

Steffensen makes deserts for the Flying Fish, Luciano’s and Cowboy Joe’s.

She bakes cookies for the student of the month at Southside Elementary School as well as for teachers’ birthdays at Grammar No. 2 Elementary School.

Let Them Eat Cake attends many of the festivals throughout the community, including Harvest Festival and the Snowflake Festival.

As a way to give back to the community, Steffensen opens her kitchen free of charge to Communities In Schools of Northeastern Nevada, for making moon pies. The moon pies are then sold to raise money to provide lunches for underprivileged children.

As part of the adopt-a-family program through Friends In Service Helping, which provides meals to families in need over Christmas, Steffensen will bake a pie for every donated ham.

Let Them Eat Cake is open from 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Sundays. To make a personal order, call 775-401-6640.



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ELKO - An Elko baker could shoot to stardom if selected for the third season of the Food Network's "Cupcake Wars."

Trinity Steffensen, owner of Let Them Eat Cake Bakery, received a call a few weeks ago by a Food Network representative asking her to audition for the show. Steffensen said they had been following her on Facebook for some time before they asked her to audition.

When Steffensen first spoke with the Food Network, she thought they had the wrong Let Them Eat Cake Bakery.

She assumed they would want the baker from the famous Let Them Eat Cake Bakery in Davis, Calif., to audition for the show. However, after the representative recited the correct phone number, Steffensen knew he was talking about her bakery.

"I was really surprised," Steffensen said. "And I was really surprised because of the power of Facebook and if you go on Facebook and type in ‘Let Them Eat Cakes,' there are a ton."

Although Steffensen said she feels special having been asked to audition for the show, baking is her passion and something she will continue to do either way.

"If I get it, I get it, if I don't, I don't," she said.

Once she was asked to audition, Steffensen had to fill out a detailed application and make an audition video that had to be published on YouTube. Jan Peterson with KENV-TV filmed her audition video.

Her application and video were turned in on Feb. 28. Steffensen said the producers will watch them and pick the contestants sometime this week.

If selected, Steffensen will go to Los Angeles to compete against three other bakers for $10,000.

Bakers are eliminated one at a time and are told to work within a theme and with certain ingredients. The final two contestants are asked to bake 1,000 cupcakes for a celebrity event.

"I would go into it with the attitude of making whatever I make and if you like it you like, if you don't, you don't and I'd do the best I can do," Steffensen said.

Let Them Eat Cake Bakery has been open in Elko since June, but Steffensen has been baking for almost two decades.

After working at Home Depot for six years, she decided to head to Las Vegas to attend culinary school at Le Cordon Bleu.

She then worked behind the scenes at places such as The Blind Onion and perfecting her baking skills before eventually having a store front to call her own.

The top selling cupcake at Let Them Eat Cake is vanilla bean, however, the top selling item is her sugar cookie.

Currently, Steffensen has a variety of St. Patrick's Day themed cupcakes such as Irish Creme or Guinness cupcakes. She also is making cupcakes out of Girl Scout cookies.

Let Them Eat Cake is open from 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Sundays. To place a personal order, call 775-401-6640.



Read more: http://elkodaily.com/news/local/article_0d890b7a-4c79-11e0-9c97-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1XCHsOG00

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