DINING & NIGHTLIFE > Featured - Pastry Swan Bakery

Local Cathedral City bakery celebrates 25th anniversary

Will Dean • The Desert Sun • March 8, 2010

Deborah Quinn isn't the typical reality TV fan — she doesn't watch much TV — but she appreciates its impact on her business.

Deborah Quinn (right), owner of Pastry Swan Bakery prepares a cake with employee Les Hook on Feb. 5. The business has been in operation for 25 years. (Omar Ornelas, The Desert Sun)

Quinn is the owner-operator of The Pastry Swan Bakery, which celebrates its 25th year in the Coachella Valley this month.

“Most of our business comes from cakes,” she said.

Lately they're not just the standard sheet and multilayered cakes. More customers are asking for cakes in nontraditional shapes, Quinn said.

TV cake shows such as ‘Ace of Cakes' on The Food Network have “really helped our business,” she said. “Twelve years ago people wouldn't pay what it took to make custom-shaped cakes.”

Now customers are paying from $130 to about $1,000 a cake, Quinn said.

The bakery's appeal is twofold — taste and creativity — longtime customer Leah Dawson of Rancho Mirage said this week.

Quinn's staff created a cake shaped as a golf bag with confectionery skis and an Olympic medal for the Dawsons' wedding in 2007, which was featured on “Platinum Weddings.” Dawson's husband is an Olympic skier, she said.

“It was a huge cake,” she said. “It was amazing, and it tasted really good too.”

Dawson continues to use Quinn's services for her kids' birthday cupcakes at school and friends' birthday cakes.

“I use them 15 times a year,” she said.

Quinn credits her “loyal” customers with keeping The Pastry Swan in business.

Last weekend, her staff created edible depictions of the cast of “Winnie the Pooh” for a baby shower, a guitar, a Louis Vuitton bag and an “ugly doll.”

The Pastry Swan first opened in Palm Desert, where it maintained its retail division until a fire in mid-November forced it to close. The bakery division, which moved to Cathedral City in 1999, remains open at 68-444 Perez Road.