SweetCakes & Candy Emporium, New Orleans

Despite Batini Brown’s belief that “taste trumps design,” the chef, owner, and pastry designer at SweetCakes & Candy Emporium turns her delectable treats into miniature works of art, crafting everything from butterflies to shark fins out of sugar and chocolate. As a baking class once changed Ms. Brown’s life by showing her a new career path, she pays it forward by offering both group and private workshops that cover baking, decorating, and the most poised way to extract one’s face from a cake at a party.