RAVEN PATRICK DE’SEAN DENNIS III, aka "Cake Man Raven," may ...

Raven Patrick De'Sean Dennis III, aka "Cake Man Raven," may be 35 years old in human years, but he has spent his last 21 as the Cake Man. Dennis, who owns the Ft. Greene bakery Cake Man Raven Confectionary, picked up the handle while baking for a junior high school fundraiser in Lynchberg, SC.

"Most kids were doing arts and crafts and stuff," says the Cake Man, "And I said, 'Why don't we do a cakewalk?'"

Thus was the event that marked the birth of Cake Boy, the nickname that stuck after the cakewalk went over so well that he began to sell cakes from his grandmother's kitchen at $10 a pop. The Cake Man, who relishes the mythology behind his persona, discusses his history as though it were a storybook with him as its hero. The story, of course, is that of the Cake Boy that made good by moving to the big city and becoming the legendary Cake Man. If you phone the bakery and ask for Raven, he'll answer, "Yeah, this is the Cake Man."

Although the Cake Man has a high-profile customer list that reads like Who's Who in Black America, and has owned his bakery for nearly three years (the anniversary is July 13), he breathlessly recounts the details of his early achievements?from having won a youth cake-decorating contest to getting his first wedding cake order at the age of 14?as though they happened yesterday. "My sister's friend ran into my band practice and said, 'Where's that boy that makes the cakes?'"

To perfect his skills, the Cake Man went up North after high school to study culinary arts at Johnson & Wales. "I was using boxed cakes," he admits. "I had to graduate from that." But it wasn't quite what he'd envisioned. "The pastry arts that they were teaching were different from what I was doing down South," he says, shaking his head. "It wasn't working for me. In that kind of cooking they had formulas; down South we had recipes."

Recipes, it seems, are formulas with personality, of which the Cake Man has a surplus. His flamboyant creations have ranged from an intricate model of the Brooklyn Bridge for Borough President Marty Markowitz, to a mock-up of two turntables with an edible Adidas high top in between them to memorialize Jam Master-J. That's not to mention his wedding cakes, which run the gamut from ten-foot-high, water-spouting Baroque structures featuring live fish and birds to the earthier Afrocentric wedding cakes, whose decorative styles reflect the heritage of the bride or groom, like fondant-covered cakes that he shaped as African drums for a Rastafarian client. All cakes can be made with the Cake Man's specialty, Red Velvet.

The bottom line is that, if it exists, the Cake Man will try to make it in cake.

"As long as it's pretty, I'm ready for it," says the Cake Man. "The stuff that ain't pretty, I don't like it."