Baking and gardening are constant passions for Josie Pollifrone, and she’s combined the two in a wonderful creative life in Mildura on the Victorian side of the Murray River.
Josie Pollifrone says her earliest memories are of being in the kitchen helping her mother and grandmother with baking and meal preparation. With her Italian heritage backed by a strong female line of bakers and gardeners, cooking and entertaining at home is part of her DNA.
“I’m the eldest of six and from about the age of four or five, I can remember my sister and I making cakes and biscuits,” Josie recalls. “We grew up on a dried fruit property at Merbein South, close to Mildura, and like lots of farmers in the area, my dad transitioned the farm to table grapes in the 1980s.”
Josie’s husband, Anthony, grew up in the nearby suburb of Cabarita, where his family, also with Italian ancestry, followed a similar path, from producing dried fruit to fresh grapes, and where the couple now lives on a 120-acre (48.5-hectare) vineyard. They’ve raised their four now adult children on the family farm, which they bought after Anthony’s father passed away in 2010.
These days, the farm has again moved with the market and concentrates on “special” grape varieties such as Cotton Candy and Sweet Sapphire, developed in the United States, to extend the flavour profile and fruiting season of the traditionally late-summer fruit. While Josie helps out on-farm when required, she also runs a busy side hustle from home, baking and decorating special-occasion cakes.
“I was always the arty one at school, but then I worked in a bank until the children came along,” she says. “It started when a family friend asked me if I could make her wedding cake and has just grown from there. As word spread, I started getting more orders. These days, I probably average about three cakes a month.”
Mind you, they’re not just any old cakes. Josie recently made the cakes — in three different flavours — for a wedding for 430 guests. “There was one three-tier, one two-tier and one single-tier,” she explains. “I probably baked about 20 cakes in total to make the tiers and it took me all week to bake and decorate them.”
While Josie admits that was a big event, she adds that the Mildura region, population 68,000-odd, is a “big town with a small-town community ethic, where everyone knows everyone and there are lots of multicultural influences”. “So milestone celebrations are often big,” she says. “I make cakes for big weddings, anniversaries and milestone birthdays. But I also do last-minute ‘oh my goodness, it’s Fred’s birthday next week, can you whip up a cake for a family dinner?’.”
Josie says that while chocolate cakes are always a winner, her most popular lines are white chocolate and raspberry, and lemon and coconut. Decoration has evolved as well, and thanks to hours of practice and inspiration and instruction, initially from books, but more recently from YouTube tutorials, she has mastered most of the techniques required to make all the decorative elements, from ganache and fondant to royal icing, as well as sugar flowers, piping and sleek finishes such as stone effects.
“I won’t ‘sugar coat’ it, as it’s a lot of work and it involves long hours,” she says. “Sometimes transporting the cakes to the venue is the most stressful part and I occasionally take the cakes to the venue and assemble them there. However, it’s been a great way to work from home at the same time as raising a family.”
These days, Josie says she appreciates that her reputation has grown by word of (literally) mouth and most clients trust her judgment and allow her to create edible works of art tailored for their needs.
In her “spare” time, Josie can be found in the garden, which has been a work in progress for the past 15 years. “I grew up in a family of gardeners, so when we moved into this house and couldn’t immediately afford to paint the whole exterior, which had a lot of chocolate-brown details and orange tiles, I knew the obvious way to disguise that was to pretty up the outside and surround it with greenery,” she says. “It was something I could do on my own and didn’t need builders or other tradies to help me. Gardeners are very generous people and enjoy sharing their knowledge and plants and I’ve learnt as I went along. I’ve created little microclimates by planting various trees and I’ve been able to extend the variety of plantings.”
Favourite elements include David Austin roses, hydrangeas, irises, salvias and box hedging. Josie has recently started developing another acre of garden beside the existing one. “The plan is that somewhere down the track, we will open for small functions,” she says. “I’ve always dreamt of sharing my skills by holding cake-decorating workshops in the garden, so maybe that will happen. Watch this space and come back in a couple of years to see how I get on.” AC
