Royal wedding cake baker Claire Ptak likes to switch it up (with recipes)

Just one bite of her scrumptious cakes, and you can see why Alice Waters reportedly begged Claire Ptak not to leave.
Royal wedding cake baker Claire Ptak. Reprinted with permission from The Violet Bakery Cookbook by Claire Ptak, copyright © 2015, published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Photographs copyright © 2015 by Kristin Perers. 
However, Chez Panisse’s loss — the Marin County native worked at the vaunted West Coast restauran