Dominick Miller crafts exquisite and whimsical floral cakes for weddings and events. But there’s one wedding cake he definitely will not be making this year.|
JENNIFER GRAUE
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
When someone claiming to be from The Food Network messaged Dominick Miller on Instagram a few months ago, the Santa Rosa baker didn’t know what to think.
“I was like, this is a little sketchy, but let’s see what this is about. Sure enough, it was legitimate,” said Miller who is one of 10 contestants on the second season of the network’s “Summer Baking Championship.”
The competition, which airs on Monday nights for eight weeks (the fourth episode airs Monday night), challenges bakers to create beach-themed treats to impress judges Carla Hall, Duff Goldman and Damaris Phillips for a chance to win $25,000.
Miller, who worked on the pastry teams at both SingleThread and Little Saint in Healdsburg, where he’s now a manager, grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he caught the baking bug in middle school. He spent much of his free time as a teenager hovering around an oven. One of his first jobs in high school was decorating cakes at a Wegman’s grocery store.
Food Network’s “Summer Baking Challenge”
Airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on The Food Network or streaming on Hulu.
Contact Dominick Miller at LadyJasmineCakes.com.
Today, he’s still baking and decorating exquisite, whimsical, floral-themed cakes for his microbakery, Lady Jasmine Cakes, which he operates out of a commissary kitchen near his home in Santa Rosa’s Roseland neighborhood. The name, Lady Jasmine, is a tribute to his sister, Jasmine, and to the flower.
Miller loves flowers and keeps a jasmine plant in his yard. When we met at Little Saint, he was wearing a blue and white, short-sleeved, floral print shirt. Flower petals from the sleeve of tattoos on his left arm peeped from behind the hem.
While he wasn’t able to share specifics of his Food Network kitchen exploits (a representative from the network was with us to make sure he didn’t give anything away), Miller has made it to the fourth episode, albeit with mixed results.
Baking triumphs, tragedies
There were definite highs on the show, like when Miller and another contestant blew the judges away in a team challenge with their crepe creations, which included a fried crepe lasagna. Or when his summer co*cktail tart made Goldman declare it took all his willpower to not “crush the whole tart.”
“I got caipirinha,” said Miller, who had never tried the classic Brazilian co*cktail made with cachaça and lime. “I thought, what if I added a cute straw and a little lime wedge on the side of the tart and decorated it to look like a co*cktail? (I) took the ‘W’ (win) in the episode with it.”
But there were some challenges that clearly were not a piece of cake, even for an experienced pastry chef.
Miller found himself in danger of going home in episodes two and three due to a near disastrous decision to stack two bundt cakes in a challenge that required contestants to make a cake that looked like an inner tube. An elderberry pie that didn’t set correctly was another mishap. But it was his use of flavors that may have saved him.
“I think it’s inevitable things go wrong under the pressure,” Miller said of the two-hour time limit on most challenges. “It’s as much a mental challenge as it is a baking challenge. Something I struggled with during my time there was second-guessing myself and doubting myself, which ultimately set me back, understandably so.”
Growing up watching shows like “Cupcake Wars” and “Chopped” on the Food Network, Miller said “making it to the show definitely made my younger self proud” and added that the whole experience has been surreal.
“I think back and I’m like, ‘did that even happen’? It sort of all felt like a dream. Once the filming is over you’re just — boop! — back to where you were before,” he said. “Getting to see it from a contestant point of view was insane. One of the most unique experiences I’ve had.”
A banner year
No matter how things turn out on The Food Network show, 2024 is turning out to be a banner year for Miller, with career moves, growing his cake business and, best of all, marrying his partner, photographer Alex Luna, on June 8.
As the couple planned their wedding, there was one detail Miller knew he was going to outsource.
“When we got engaged I immediately knew: I’m not making my wedding cake,” he said. “And I saw it as an opportunity to support other local cake artists.”
The couple opted for a dessert table with three cakes from three Bay Area pastry chefs.
One is an Earl Grey cake with blackberry sauce and pistachio buttercream; another is a vanilla almond cake with passion fruit curd, strawberries and strawberry buttercream. Miller also has tapped Sonoma County baker Hillary Burdick from A Little Luster, who will make a chocolate cake with espresso ganache and espresso buttercream.
