The Chocolate Rose: In the Sweet Spot

Vanessa Benoit deftly twirls a pastry nail with her left hand as her right hand squeezes a steady stream of pink Italian buttercream from a piping bag onto its surface. She forms a perfect rosette with a few fluid motions. I inwardly groan as I realize we will be trying to recreate the process and once again my klutziness will be front and center. As someone who has a tough time walking and chewing gum, coupled with dominant left-handedness, this class, the Art of the Cake, has been anything but a cakewalk for me. However, I am surprised at how much I’m enjoying tackling each challenge and how accomplished it’s making me feel. Maybe it’s the unflustered demeanor and patience that Vanessa Benoit, owner and baker at the Chocolate Rose, brings to the table.

She has already demonstrated and led the five of us (including three lefties!) through the varying stages of assembling the perfect cake: leveling, slicing, filling and frosting. Benoit has broken down each of these tasks into more manageable steps with plenty of handson guidance. Along the way, her repertoire is sprinkled with personal tips she has garnered throughout her career as a pastry chef. “It’s easier to work with an eight-inch cake because it has some weight to work with,” Benoit explains. “There is a lot less slipping and sliding around than if you use a smaller version, and therefore it’s better suited for practicing when you are starting out.” By the end of our class, we all have a beautiful, dare I say a “professional,” looking cake of our own to share with family and friends. Feeling triumphant, I am already debating which class I should take next: citrus desserts, pies, or perhaps yeast breads? After today, I feel ready to conquer them all! Benoit relishes the confidence she instills in her students and it is a key reason she continues to teach despite an already daunting schedule. She admits that the positive feedback helps fuel her adrenaline.

Benoit’s foray into “caking” was initially through a lot of self-teaching and trial and error. “I was learning before the onset of all these online videos and I’ve never been much of a techie anyway. I mainly learned and mastered techniques the old-fashioned way, by reading books,” Benoit recalls. She would bestow many of her experimental bakes on her nurse mother who in turn would share the treats with her hospital coworkers in Boston. Before long, Benoit started getting orders, and ultimately, Cakes by Vanessa was launched. Realizing her side gig was something she yearned to turn into a culinary career, Benoit decided it was now time to invest in a formal education. She enrolled in Cape Cod Community College for hotel and restaurant management. Her high GPA garnered her a $40,000 scholarship to attend Johnson & Wales University. On her last day of finals at Johnson & Wales, she gave birth to her youngest daughter. Benoit jokes that at least she waited for the test to be over. She graduated, again with a near perfect GPA, with a bachelor’s degree in food service entrepreneurship and an associate degree in baking and pastry arts.

After graduating, Benoit accepted a position as pastry chef at the Regatta of Cotuit. During her tenure there, she mastered the ins and outs of the back-of-the-house duties in a fast-paced restaurant environment; lessons that Benoit still carry with her today. “I did everything there. Pastry was always predominantly my thing, but I worked the line, too.” Benoit adds, “before I left, I was running the kitchen and all that involved, like doing the ordering and I felt I kind of got lost. I had strayed away from doing the things I really wanted to do, like creating beautiful, custom wedding cakes, and I missed that. I gained a lot of valuable experience that made me the pastry chef I am today and I learned to handle so many different situations. I am forever grateful for all my time there and the life skills it taught me.”

After four-plus years, Benoit decided it was time to move on and refocus on her passion. Initially, she used the kitchen at the Regatta, with whom she maintained a good relationship, to launch her bakery, The Chocolate Rose. Eventually, with support from husband Jason, Benoit did a “build in” at their Sandwich home, essentially creating a licensed commercial baking space from which to run her own business. For the next seven years, Benoit, with help from family, “worked her tail off” growing her business and establishing a reputation with her quality artistic confections. In 2018, Benoit came to another crossroads in her career. Her growth was such that she was spending precious time commuting between her home bakery, deliveries and office space she rented. The search for space to unify her entire operation so she could grow a support team (she was basically a one-woman show), as well as gain more ties within the community, led to an available building in Mashpee where The Chocolate Rose is now headquartered. The naked, bright and airy space won her over, and Benoit was able to transform it to her exact specifications.

Benoit has her fingers in many pots but has been primarily known as a baker of delicious and elegant custom cakes. She has earned a coveted spot on many of the preferred vendors lists on Cape and off. Her social media sites showcase countless images of her breathtaking creations and testimonials from satisfied customers. “I am a pastry chef,” declares Benoit. “To me it’s all about a complete dessert. I don’t want to eat hunks of cake with just layers of frosting sandwiched in between.”

She is firm believer in fillings of all kinds: fruits, creams, mousses, curds and ganache. Her cake flavors include mudslide (dark chocolate cake soaked with Kahlua, filled with chocolate ganache and Bailey’s cream), bananas foster (vanilla cake, caramel pecan rum sauce, pastry cream, fresh bananas) and lemon (lemon cake, lemon curd filling and choice of raspberry, blueberry or blackberry compote). Thirty-two mouth-watering varieties comprise the impressive list of flavor choices at The Chocolate Rose. Benoit realizes life would be easier if she pared down her selections, but she shrugs and says, “They all sell, plus I thrive on variety. I will probably add before I subtract,” she laughs. “I love playing with flavor combinations.”