Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Peggy Tucker. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Peggy, thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

I have always loved blown glass and came across Dale Chihuly phenomenal work about 30 years ago and was blown away, no pun intended.

I often thought how amazing it would be to create such beautiful pieces out of sugar!

As a sugar artist I began to think about creating a sugar garden taking my inspiration from Dale Chihuly glass in the garden exhibits.
This would be something that has never been accomplished before anywhere in the world. I think perhaps it’s because no one’s ever been crazy enough to try to put sugar/isomalt outdoors.

I need this project to benefit other that might never get a changes to work with Isomalt/sugar at this level.
So, I joined forces with Jessie Bostick who’s the chef at Southwest Illinois College to see if her students would like to learn the art of blown and pulled sugar. So, in June we began to create some amazing sugar pieces and continued building all through the summer.

On September 23, 2023 our outdoor sugar exhibit came to life at the Southwest Illinois College campus. Although it only last a single day, our students had a phenomenal time learning and accomplishing something that had never been done.

One of the things that I truly love is teaching and sharing my love of sugar to kids of all ages.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I wasn’t always in the caking/sugar world. I went to school for bookkeeping and accounting, but only ended up recently using those skills. Out of school I worked for Atlanta cuisine a company, offering catering service to the airlines, and in 1983 we moved from Chicago to Rochester Minnesota, where I landed a position with IBM, building the memory boards for the AS400 units from there. I moved on to working on one of their docks, loading and unloading semi trucks. I always love the look on the truck drivers faces when I told them, I was their forklift driver, priceless!
So, as you can see, at wasn’t too far of a jump from forklift driver to cake decorator/artist. LOL

I started playing around with cakes way back in 1984 because I needed to make my daughter a birthday cake and had no clue how to decorate it with pretty piped boarders or make a buttercream flower.
Back then there wasn’t Google let along online class to learn from, but there was the library which had a few books.

Over the years, I continued to learn and practice cake decorating skills. I took my first cake decorating class at Michael’s in 1994 which was the Wilton course three, where I learned about fondant.

In 1999 I open Cakes by Peg, and began doing custom cakes. 1999 was also the year that I learned about cake shows, imagine my surprise that there was a whole community out there who shared my passion.

I attended my first ICES s convention and became a member in 1999.
From there, I learned about other cake shows and competitions, which opened up a whole new experience.

I love blown glass work, and my favorite artist is Dale Chihuly. I kept trying to get classes to learn how to do blown glass but due to low enrollment or the weather was not cooperating classes keep being canceled. .So I thought to myself why can’t I do that kind of work using sugar/Isomalt. So I began reading up on how to properly cook sugar and Isomalt to obtain different consistency’s and temperature. After three months of playing around with different recipes and teaching myself how to do pulled and blown sugar work, I entered my first competition.

Upper Midwest bakers association was holding their annual convention and i decided to enter three professional categories, wedding cake, sugar, and floral design. I was astonished when I won three 1st Pl. prizes. and walked away with three gold metals, and the judges loving my sugar work. Following that show, I began getting calls to come and teach gumpaste flowers, piping, and of course pulled and blown sugar work.

In 2010 I took an exam to become a certified master sugar artist. In order to pass, I was required to execute clean work, apply acceptable food handling processes, and demonstrate expertise in eight different skills to create 3 displays cakes in eight hours. I am now one of 36 certified master sugar artist in the world.

In 2009, I took on a very unusual student, Jenny Skinner looked me up online and booked a private class on fondant. When she arrived for her four hour class, her true intentions became apparent. Jenny didn’t want to learn how to work with fondant she wanted to know about fondant as a medium. As a food chemist the class served as a form of research to see whether or not her product ideal was feasible. Jenny came for several more private classes to learn about other products. When she arrived for class one day, I was in the process of cooking isomalt and getting it colored for an upcoming class. She asked why I was going through all of that trouble and I told her it was because the students were afraid of the cooking process and this made it really easy for them to use. All they had to do was melt the cubes in the microwave to begin playing and creating their beautiful sugar pieces.

Well, being that, Jenny was a food chemist her mind began to click, and it was just two short weeks after that and many phone calls that the first pre-cooked Isomalt in red and green were delivered to my door for me to test. It wasn’t long after that that the company CakePlay was born offering, premade isomalt in Clear and many beautiful colors took the cake world by storm.

Jenny own the company and I became the face of the company, traveling teaching and demoing and talking to new customers all over the world using CakePlay premade isomalt nibs.

Then in 2016 I bought the company from Jenny and have been running it ever since continuing to manufacture and sell the highest quality premade Isomalt on the market.

So here I am 30 plus years later an award winning Certified Master Sugar Artist and internationally known for teaching, demonstrating and judging all over the world, I”m the owner of School of Cakeology, which is a mobile classroom specializing in cake design, decorating, and the art of sugar and the owner of CakePlay Inc which manufactures and sell per-made isomalt.

I was named as one of Dessert Professional’s Top Ten Cake Artists of North America in 2014 and in 2016 was awarded the Sweet Life Award and in 2018 was inducted into the ICES Hall of Fame. I’ve has appeared on Food Network, Great Bake and Fox News and has written articles published in American Cake Decorating Magazine, Edible Artist Network Magazine, Cakes and Crafts Magazine and ICES Magazine.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Teaching!!! I love watching the faces of students when they do their first blown bubble or make their first beautiful ribbon. I get the most joy out of teaching kids and seeing them go on to competing in cake competitions and winning, it’s the best feeling!!!

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Just as things seem to be rolling along and everything in my life running nice and smooth along came a hurdle that got placed in front of me in 2010. In the midst of running Cakes by Peg, traveling teaching classes and judging Cake shows along came ovarian cancer. I was diagnosed on a Tuesday and in surgery by Friday morning. Recovery time six weeks followed by 3+ months of chemo. Well, I knew I couldn’t get over the hurdle, but I could damn well go around it which is exactly what I did. Two weeks out of surgery I held to my schedule and did a large wedding with individual 8 inch cakes on each table along with a three tiered wedding cake, and the flower arrangements for the wedding. Four weeks later when I started chemo we had to adjust my chemo dates so that I was given chemo on Thursday so I could fly out on Friday teach on Saturday and Sunday and fly back on Monday to run the bakery and get ready for chemo again on Thursday. A few months in I realized that some thing had to go, I could not keep up the pace I was going at and so I had to pivot and figure out what really brought me the most enjoyment. Was it the bakery or was it teaching. It was shortly after that that I closed Cakes by Peg. What I did learn was that staying positive through it all and true to myself and keep moving forward.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.cakeplay.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peggy.tucker.796