But who is the family behind the bakery and the creators of the legendary guava cheese pastryβthe refugiado? Really the community was the one that supported our household buying our cakes, for friends, families, the whole neighborhood. We kids did what we had to do to support the business, whether it was dishes or learning how to bake. My sister and I became cake decorators just by watching my mother!
So becoming this big name wasn't deliberate. I just started helping out my family because that's what you had to do. All of us would come out of school and help every day.
This photo was taken in in Cuba and they are posing with cakes made by their mother, Rosa Porto. We lived in Cuba when we started. In , our family presented papers to leave the country. It was a difficult time because both my parents were fired from their jobs. Prior they had made very good salaries, and then we went from that to making zero dollars. My mother was a talented bakerβshe was self-taught and so that is how we got started. But money was illegal, and you were not supposed to have a private enterprise.
Every day, my mother ran the risk of being caught and going to jail for 25 years. We were lucky enough to live in a neighborhood where our neighbors would tell us when the secret police were coming. Through the backyard, my mother would quickly get everything baking supplies out of the house. She was doing that until we left for the United States in So finally in , we were able to come to Los Angeles and again, I found out that friends and family were here!
There was a large Cuban community from our town so when they found out she was in Los Angeles the orders started. She was here only a month when she made her first wedding cake. So she went from Cuba baking illegally to the U. My brother says she never went to bed because she would have to make three wedding cakes every weekend. That means she was baking all night long. And sometimes we would go to the movies and come back and she was still baking.
