It is coming up on a ten years considering that Lisa Corbin took home a second-put near-get on Food Network’s “Cake Wars,” but the proprietor of the Chocolate Bar Cafe in Grosse Pointe Woods is nowhere close to prepared to stage out of the kitchen area.
Hitting the sweet location with a profession she both equally enjoys and is gifted in, Corbin fell into the industry by natural means, starting a home-dependent baking and cake-decorating enterprise — Cakes by Lisa — even though her four children ended up young.
As existence often does, a person detail led to a different and just after a summer months working for the previous operator of the Chocolate Bar Cafe, Corbin went all in and purchased the small business in December 2007.
“Right at the starting of the economic downturn,” she mentioned. “So we’ve survived the economic downturn, a pandemic and electrical power outages. There is been numerous things.”
Photograph by Renee Landuyt
Lisa Corbin is operator of the Chocolate Bar Cafe, an old-fashioned soda fountain in Grosse Pointe Woods.
In its site at 20737 Mack since 1990, the cafe has extensive offered a one of a kind dose of nostalgia as an outdated-fashioned soda fountain, serving up specialty ice product creations, chocolate, sweet and cakes, all to the track record noise of an operational jukebox.
Less than Corbin’s leadership, the wide variety of sweet treats grew to contain cupcakes, scones, biscotti, shortbread, chocolate caramel pretzels and other pastries.
“We’re constantly producing new cupcake flavors,” she explained. “We have a whole lot of new ice cream flavors to make sundaes and milkshakes that we (acquired at the close of 2022), so which is form of pleasurable. We have Cookie Monster ice product (and) that is my favourite. It is Blue Moon and Oreos and cookie dough. It’s ridiculous.”
The shop’s iconic wall artwork showcasing the phrase “chocolate” in a number of various languages was the brainchild of Corbin’s brother-in-law, artist John Corbin, though her spouse, Kim, offers his lawful know-how to the business enterprise as an attorney.
Courtesy photo
Lisa Corbin, still left, and Laura Amodeo, proper, came in 2nd position on “Cake Wars” with this Female Scout themed log cabin cake.
But which is right around the place the spouse and children acquire-in stops. Corbin’s little ones, the oldest of which is now 31, don’t very share the same passion for flour and butter.
“My just one daughter does like to cook dinner, but they’re not interested in this business enterprise at all,” she laughed.
Nevertheless, Corbin’s talents in the kitchen lend by themselves to cooking as well, in accordance to these who know her.
During previous winter season and all over again this time, Corbin has made and sent a couple pots of soup each 7 days to a soup kitchen through the Open Door Ministry at Fort Avenue Presbyterian Church. The kitchen’s organizer referred to as her philanthropy, “a godsend.”
“Her soups are just as fantastic as her desserts,” Kim Corbin explained.
The Grosse Pointe Park resident’s Tv set debut on year 1, episode 8 of “Cake Wars” — celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the Girl Scouts’ Gold Award by way of a Girl Scouts topic — aired Aug. 17, 2015, on which she performed the purpose of assistant to pal and fellow baker Laura Amodeo.
“We designed a big log cabin and she created all this surroundings all-around it,” Corbin recalled. “It was fairly cool. We should’ve received, but it was fairly intense.”
Courtesy photo
Corbin’s roulette wheel cake was showcased on a billboard as element of an MGM Grand Detroit advertising and marketing marketing campaign.
Baking competitiveness shows remain all the rage for casual viewing, with just about much too many titles at present on streaming-giant Netflix to rely, and usually go away viewers pondering what definitely requires location powering the scenes on episodes that surface to be filmed in a matter of hrs.
Corbin’s excursion out to Los Angeles for the one “Cake Wars” episode essentially was a 4-day affair, on the 1st of which contestants had been sent out to ordinary outlets to shop for the elements they would need.
Other sudden filming techniques, she said, she’s not permitted to expose.
With no latest programs to have a next the moment-in-a-life span encounter as a contestant on a baking competitiveness, Corbin is only experiencing day-to-day lifetime owning a special bakery and ice cream smaller small business in the Pointes.
“I think men and women are generally surprised when they walk in. They are like, ‘Wow, this is remarkable!’” she claimed. “It’s just exciting and nostalgic. It will take people back in time.”