Favi’s Fabulous Cakes celebrated its grand opening this month at its first brick-and-mortar in Hillsboro’s charming historic downtown.
While the storefront is new, owner Fabiola Medina is not new to the business of cakes. For the past decade, the pastry chef and cake designer ran her custom dessert business out of her home in Hillsboro. “I was growing so much I just ran out of space at home. It was taking over my living room, my dining room, my kitchen,” Medina said.
The completely remodeled Main Street storefront, which used to be a Subway sandwich shop, now showcases a variety of multi-tiered sample cakes that highlight Medina’s decorating chops. Among them: a two-tiered emerald green cake with gold sugar leaves and gilding; an edible high heel with a pink bow on the back; and a black-frosted cake with gold veining to resemble marble, topped with a bejeweled tiara.
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Medina makes everything from custom cakes and tarts to lemon bars and flan for a wide variety of events. But weddings and quinceañeras are her bread and butter, so to speak.
Through her years of experience, she’s learned that, “style and design are very personal.” So Medina said she asks lots of questions. “If someone says they want a ‘girly’ cake, what does that mean?” She then customizes from there.
On Favi’s Fabulous Cakes Instagram page, you’ll find examples of just that. Consider these Boho themed baby shower cupcakes, each with two gold-brushed feathers on top. A custom, four-tier quinceanera cake features intricate, colorful designs with a Mexican theme. A 12-inch pastel mermaid cake supports seashells and seahorses. These cake pops resemble traditional pan dulce. And this quilted Chanel purse cake comes with gold chaining (made by Medina for her own birthday).
Medina’s techniques depend on the design but range from hand painting and airbrushing to molding fondant and marzipan.
On a recent Thursday, Medina was making another sample cake to display for customers. It had a vanilla base, vanilla buttercream frosting and fresh flowers positioned at the base. The vertical cake, a modern style she said is trending in Europe, had supports inside to keep it upright.
“You have to make it stable for a long drive,” said Medina, who delivers desserts to clients herself as far away as Hood River.
Medina was inspired to become a pastry chef after visiting Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Portland during a high school field trip while she was a student at The Dalles High School.
She graduated Le Cordon Bleu in 2012 with a pastry chef associate’s degree and worked at the Skamania Lodge in Stevenson, Washington, for about three years, first as an intern, then as an employee. But she said working long hours and weekends was tough on her family.
So for the next several years, baking was a side gig on top of working as an enrollment specialist at Fortegra, an insurance brokerage company.
“The goal was always to have a bakery, but the equipment is expensive,” Medina said, so saving money over the next several years was the goal.
In 2016, she turned to cakes full time. Medina rented a kitchen in Beaverton and sold baked goods at the Hillsboro Tuesday Night Market and took custom orders.
To help continue saving for a storefront, in 2017 she moved her kitchen to her home and got a job as an inventory planner and buyer with inventory management service company U.P.PRO.
But in 2020, family concerns put cake making on hold. Her son was diagnosed with epilepsy and mother had kidney failure, Medina said. She was a caregiver for both. In May 2020, her mother died just a month after Medina’s brother passed away.
“I couldn’t do cakes. I was depressed,” Medina said.
But she eventually got back into it because she needed to keep her mind busy.
“It made me feel better making others happy with my work,” she said.
So she pushed ahead. And by 2022, she saved enough to open a storefront; in January 2023, construction began.
Medina is the sole baker working in her business. Her sister works the front counter in the afternoons, and her teenage daughter helps after school. And her mother’s spirit lives on by her side.
“I still have, and use daily, my first KitchenAid mixer my mom bought me after graduating culinary school. So it’s very dear to my heart,” Medina said.
If you go:
Favi’s Fabulous Cakes: 301 E. Main St., Hillsboro; 12-7 p.m. Thursday and Friday; 2-7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. 541-980-9582; favisfabulouscakes@gmail.com; www.instagram.com/favisfabulouscakes.
More to know:
While most of the desserts must be ordered in advance, walk-in customers can buy treats such as cupcakes and flan from display cases at the front.
Medina hopes to rent out the couple-hundred-square-foot entry area in her storefront for special events, popups and cake decorating classes after wedding season is over in early fall.
— Teresa Mahoney, tmahoney@oregonian.com
