Clara Cakes
⤏ IN CONVERSATION WITH NYDIA HARTONO
⤏ PHOTOS BY IRIS RAY | MAKE-UP BY ASHLEY JENSEN | STYLING BY LINDSEY HARTMAN
⤏ ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 2018
Clara Polito is 20-years-old and already author of Clara Cakes: Delicious and Simple Vegan Desserts for Everyone! Clara taught herself how to bake after becoming vegan at age 12. It was around the same time she started going out to shows in her hometown of LA. The two interests merged into a dessert stand at DIY and punk shows around town. Clara has hosted dinner pop-ups in Michigan, Ohio, New York, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles and written for publications like Teen Vogue, Tastemade, ROOKIE and more.
NYDIA: Your story has been one that’s a decade in the making. How has Clara Cakes come to be what it is today?
CLARA: I think it’s directly intertwined with getting older and my interests. When I was younger, my business was pretty much solely selling at music shows and meeting different artists [and] getting customers that way. So it kinda reflects each stage in my life. After that, I was doing a lot of pop-ups, expanding with cooking, and getting wholesale accounts. The cookbook was all a reflection of my youth and the start of the business. Since then, it’s been interesting to see how my business started when I was 12 and how it affects me now as a 21-year-old. It’s something I’m very much passionate about so it’s cool to see it growing.
N: How has it affected you as a 21-year-old?
C: I carry a huge sense of responsibility since I'm dependent on [myself] for advancing my career. I think when I was young, it was all new. Now, it’s up to me what phase two of Clara Cakes looks like.
N: One thing I deeply respect about you is your entrepreneurial spirit and the fact that you are a self-starter. You didn’t wait for anyone to give you permission. As Ed Templeton says from your book, “[You] didn’t wait for anything to happen to [you], [you] made it happen for [yourself]”. What pushed you to turn your hobby into a business?
C: I’ve always been like that. Baking has always been my hobby and my passion. I think when you are self-made, you have to take your trade and really run with it. Even now, it’s a struggle sometimes because I am self-made. I don’t have someone funding me to do this. This is all solely on my own shoulders, but that motivates me. When you see people who get it so easy, that makes you strive harder and have a longer lasting career. I take pride in what I’ve built for myself already, but I want to take it so much further because I've had to work that much harder for it.
N: What is your personal philosophy to cooking?
C: Not trying to impress somebody.
“Who fucks with you is a strong reflection of what you’re putting out.”
N: How does that DIY mentality manifest itself in the way that you come up with your recipes and the aesthetics that you choose to use?
C: With the cookbook, it’s just acting on my taste preferences in the moment and I don’t have a manager being like, “Yeah I think that fits your whole vibe and your aesthetic." It’s more from the heart. With the show, it’s being functional, but also putting my stamp on everything.
N: What motivates you?
C: It’s changed over the years. Now, I would say, it’s getting messages from people. Last night, this young vegan kid reached out to me and said that they really appreciate my work. That meant so much to me. I’m really lucky to have so many thoughtful people that have been following me and are passionate about my work. The fact that they share a passion for what I do is what motivates me. You can only motivate yourself for so long. When you get messages like that, it’s a nice reminder that my work has a purpose besides being a job.
N: Living in LA, what are your thoughts on how veganism has become more of a health conscious decision as opposed to an ethical one?
C: My mission is to move away from the idea that “veganism is fitness” because I feel like that itself excludes so many body types. I don’t have a six-pack, I don’t want to have a six-pack. I understand the motivation of wanting to feel great and being vegan does tend to make you feel great. But for me, I’m vegan because of animal rights, because of the environment, because I don’t want to support corporations that mistreat their workers and abuse so many systems on so many levels. Factory farms represent capitalism. That distaste fuels what I do; that keeps me going. If your motive is just to become a fitness account, that feels so temporary.
N: If you could give your past self advice, what would it be?
C: I wanna say, “Have fun and be proud of what you do and really own it. Know that what you do is for a reason and don’t care about what a certain category of people think.” To put it in modern terms, who fucks with you is a strong reflection of what you’re putting out.
N: One of my favorite parts of your cookbook are the playlists you curated. What’s your favorite music to bump to in the kitchen?
C: If I were being my true self, I’d say Nelly Furtado’s Loose.
N: If you were to translate your chart — Pisces sun, Aries moon, rising Virgo — into a dessert, what would it be?
“It’s up to me what phase two of Clara Cakes looks like.“
C: I think it would be a cake, because a cake has structure, and that’s Virgo rising. The cake base would be something that’s nice and airy to represent the fluffiness of Pisces. And the filling would be a tart seasonal filling like plum because of my Aries moon. And the frosting would probably be a vanilla bean cinnamon frosting. I think that’s representative right? It’s all disguised in this vanilla looking cake, but once you get in there you’re like, “Oh wow, this isn’t what I was expecting.” But it’s irresistible and pleases all your taste buds all at once.
N: Can we talk about how cool and hilarious your mom is? Shoutout to Colleen. How has she influenced you?
C: She’s always been a huge influence for me. She’s always played really great music. She’s the best interior designer I know — it’s not her profession, but it’s insane how good she is at making a house look really cool and specific to who she is. I think she’s a style icon.
N: She’s all of Queer Eye in one person.
C: They wish [laughs].
N: Where do you see Clara Cakes going in 5 years?
C: I wanna see it go international and really conquer the video spectrum of recipes, having more cookbooks, having more influence within fashion and design. I think what I’m doing is very niche still, I’d love to see more people identify with it.
N: The depletion of our resources and treatment of animals have come into public consciousness more recently. How do you think that has affected the way people see veganism?
C: It is interesting that veganism is so stigmatized, because it's such a direct reflection of what’s been going on in our economy for the past 40 years. Factory farms are taking over and buying out small businesses. It relates directly to feminism too, because we’re commodifying female bodies in the dairy industry by impregnating them artificially. A dairy cow only lives 7-9 years, but that entire time they’re pregnant or have just given birth so they can have breast milk. It’s so representative of the economy we have today where we abuse what we have in order to sell things for nothing. It becomes something you don’t have to think about. Now we have the farm-to-table people who think that they’re doing an amazing job. Not to take away from that, but they’re only doing an “amazing” job for the rich.
N: Do you have big dick energy?
C: I’d like to think so, spiritually.
N: Do you identify as a communist?
C: I remember when I started baking, I was like, “If you want to pursue your dream then you should." As I got older, I realized you have to be put in a position to do what you love and that itself is a privilege because there are many people who are born into systems that limit doing what they love. I don’t think anyone’s truly doing well under the economic system we have. Right now, we’re living in a time where no matter how much you love doing what you do, your work feels very worthless within minutes. And I’d like to live in a world that doesn't expect so much of us to the point where we think what we’re doing is pointless because it’s not translating into currency or likes. I don’t think food should be a scarcity. I don’t think water should be a scarcity. We have plenty of money to go around; we have plenty of food and water to go around for that to not happen.
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⤏ NYDIA HARTONO (SHE/HER) IS A PHOTOGRAPHER AND FILMMAKER BASED IN SINGAPORE. NYDIA GRADUATED EMERSON COLLEGE IN 2017 AS A VISUAL AND MEDIA ARTS MAJOR AND CURRENTLY SERVES AS PHOTO EDITOR FOR GAUGE MAGAZINE.