The sudden death of her husband pushed new mother Yonelle Drakes to cope with the grief by immersing herself in the art of baking. What started out as a coping mechanism has evolved into a full-fledged business today.
“It was a means of escape because the grief was so intense,” she told the Sunday Stabroek about the period when her 31-year-old husband Osei Drakes died suddenly leaving her widowed and with a six-month-old baby.
Her story of creating her business, Nelle Gateau, which she is in the process of rebranding, is even more inspiring because throughout it she had a full-time, day job as a customs officer.
With the support of her five sisters and other family members and friends, she rallied through and not just with her skills and what she has learnt locally but she recently graduated from the International Culinary Center (ICC) in Manhattan with honours.
Since as she believes, “we are stuck on sponge cake and fruit cake,” she hopes to give Guyanese different flavours and cultures through her cakes. Wedding cakes are her specialty, as she gains a sense to joy from being able to express the bride’s personality in the form of a cake. But she does not get enough opportunity to do so, since many persons would take her a photograph of a cake and ask her to replicate it.
“This does not allow me to express my creativity and while there are no copyright laws covering cakes, one is supposed to pay homage to the original cake designer. And what persons don’t realise is that the cake actually represents the personality of a bride, so when you just have a picture it is not you being represented in the cake,” she said.
She longs to be allowed to express herself and would want the bride to talk about herself so she can craft a cake to suit her personality.
“Have you represented in your cake, that is what I tell my brides. I like creativity and originality,” she emphasised.
Died suddenly
Drakes had been married for about three years and she and her husband had just become new parents when he died suddenly in 2009.
Osei Drakes was working with the Guyana National Bureau of Standards and had travelled to Mexico for a workshop. It was during the workshop that he become ill with a brain problem which was triggered by the high altitude in that country.
“He never came back to Guyana alive,” the young woman said.
She travelled to the country to be with him and he underwent what was believed to be a successful operation and was supposedly on his way to recovery when he succumbed on April 11, 2009.
“His death took a toll on me and I realised in an effort to maintain my control I had to keep myself gainfully occupied. The grief was so intense I had to make a firm decision to not talk about it; stop entertaining the conversation… I will advise anyone who is grieving not to talk,” she said.
“One of my hobbies was baking and I started with my recipe books just to keep me busy. Good thing about recipe books you have to concentrate because there are the instructions and this was my escape…,” she shared.
She recalled that she wanted to do something different and decided to attend the Carnegie School of Home Economics where she did cookery, cakes and pastries and cake decorating courses and was successful. From there she began experimenting with cake decorating but she believes her mother was her first teacher in cake decorating as she had learnt it at her women’s ministry group at church.
“I was a teenager at the time, and I fell in love with the cake-baking aspect of the culinary field,” she said.
She began making cakes for her friends and family birthdays and even contributed to charitable organisations, but her business really picked up when persons from her workplace started to order. As the business became “serious” in 2013 she began to invest in tools of the trade to enhance her work, because, as she pointed out, without those one cannot have optimal results. But then she reached a point where she realised some of the techniques that persons were requesting required greater skills and knowledge of the field and it was then she started searching internationally.
She was impressed with the International Culinary Center and decided to do a three-month certificate course there, which she described as very hectic and intense and had students from across the globe participating.
The international class provided a potpourri of diverse skills and culture and this helped to enhance the course and drove her to do her best as she had to be on her A game at all times.
She only recently returned from her graduation. She was on the dean’s list for maintaining over 90% percentage and graduated at the top of her class, earning a distinction. She is now proud to be ICC alumna and join persons such as American TV celebrity chef and restaurateur Bobby Flay, who was among the first batch to graduate from the institution.
She spoke glowingly about working with Ron Ben-Israel, an Israeli pastry chef and TV celebrity, who is the executive chef and owner of Ron Ben-Israel Cakes in New York City.
“I learned that there are many was of covering a cake, many sugar doughs that can be used. It was immense knowledge. I understand that there is the ideal sugar dough for every technique in cake decorating. It is honestly a dream come through for me, it is something I was praying about for years,” she said of her time spent at ICC.
She felt she really needed to acquire the skills she garnered and now she is about to officially launch Nelle Gateau. Guyanese can expect more than the British techniques they are accustomed to in cakes such as French techniques like opera cake, Italian such as genoise and others that can be filled with assorted flavourings.
“My aim is introduce various types of butter creams. We are somewhat stuck with the British ones but there are the Swiss, Italian and other varieties of butter cream. I hope to offer a variety of flavouring to the Guyanese populace,” the budding business owner said.
She pointed out that the culinary world is diverse and there is so much more to offer, and this is what Nelle Gateau would be affording its customers. Her specialties will be cakes and mousses.
Tough times
While she is proud of where she is today, Drakes said that over the ten years since lost her husband she has faced tough times. However, she has not only expanded her knowledge in the culinary field, but also read for an MBA.
Her schedule has been tight, but her sisters and friends have helped her tremendously.
“I don’t even pay attention to social media because I am always on the clock. I try to live a disciplined way. I try to discipline myself and monitor my time,” she said adding that this was how she got through the rough years with the assistance of her family and friends.
“It took a lot of years and work to get me through… but I am still alive and well and kicking,” she further said.
Talking about her work as a customs officer, Drakes said she was pursuing a diploma in accountancy when she was made aware of a vacancy at the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) and she was successful in her application. After 17 years with the GRA, she is the officer in charge of the GNIC Transit Shed. “It is a very demanding job and you work beyond regular hours,” she said.
Asked how she has stayed so long at the job, Drakes said that apart from the fact that she loves her job it also gives her a sense of stability, which helped her through the difficult years. She pointed out as well that she learns every day on the job and for her knowledge is power.
Her work commitment and the structured way in which she operates, she believes, comes from the way she and her five siblings were brought by their parents, especially her late father.
“We grew up in a disciplined home. Our parents really pushed us, and it hurts that our father (he died in 2015 and it was devastating) …has not lived to see the fruits of his labour blossom and expand,” she said.
She shared that they are all developing their careers and doing well, and she recalled that their father used to say that he was raising his girls to be strong and independent and they must be driven. “Now I understand what he was telling us all those years, now our strength is manifesting. We had to maintain a kitchen garden and we had livestock and my father made us fix our bicycles. My father was a hands-on person and he was very strategic in his decisions. Our father was like a driving force in our family, our mother too,” she said of her parents.
“I think we had the best father in the whole wide world,” she said of the late Walter Streete.
She said all of them are unique and it all comes together to make a “strategic fit.” They are a close-knit family and her mom Claudette Streete is an integral part of their world.
Yonelle Drakes can be contacted on 685-5460.
