The Taste of Kherson: How a Couple Made a Cake the City's Gastronomic Calling Card and Revived Their Business After Losing Everything

More than 20 years ago, Anna and Kostyantyn Voskoboinyk from Kherson worked at a factory in Italy and dreamed of starting their own business. Eventually, they developed a recipe and created the "Kherson" cake, which became a hallmark of the city. On New Year's Eve before the full-scale invasion, every third family in Kherson chose it as their festive dessert.

In the early days of the major war, Anna and Kostyantyn lost their entire business—confectioneries and restaurants in Kherson, as well as ice cream kiosks in resort towns of the region. They started from scratch in Vinnytsia. Now their main dessert, the "Kherson" cake, is sold all over Ukraine and can even be ordered from abroad.

LIGA.netI visited Vinnytsia and found out what brought such immense human affection to the cake, how entrepreneurs managed to restore their businesses in just a few months, and what "Kherson" really tastes like.

The Factory, Ice Cream, and Kherson. How It All Began

In Vinnytsia, it's evening and it's snowing. The townspeople hurry from work, wait for public transport, and gather for meetings with friends in warm cafes. One such cafe was opened in a neighborhood called Vyshenka in 2022. It's called "Amici."

Two weeks after the opening, queues were forming at the entrance and even on the street to the café. This is how the residents of Vinnytsia supported people who lost everything they had built over 15 years but found the strength to revive their business in another city. "Amici" was opened by Anna and Kostiantyn Voskoboinyk, entrepreneurs from Kherson who "made themselves."

When Anna was 19 and her husband was 21, they went to Italy for work, taking jobs at a plastic manufacturing factory. They spent five years saving money and dreaming of having their own business, but they couldn’t decide on what type of business it should be. The young couple had to sacrifice a lot, but they still had one guilty pleasure – occasionally treating themselves to Italian ice cream at a gelateria.

It was there that the idea to make "gelato italiano" was born – ice cream using Italian technology, but here in Ukraine. 20 years ago, such ice cream was not yet available in our cities, says Anna Voskoboinyk.

The couple started their business in 2003: they invested all their savings, bought equipment, and opened an ice cream kiosk in the resort village of Zalizny Port in the Kherson region. Kostyantyn underwent training in ice cream making and focused on production. Anna took charge of sales – she had experience from childhood when she helped her mother trade at the market during the crisis-ridden 1990s.

In the summer, the couple worked at a resort in Ukraine, and after the season ended, they went to a factory in Italy to later reinvest their earnings into their own business.

"At first, we only had one plywood kiosk," Anna says. "Gradually, there were more, we made them from quality materials and branded them. Then we decided to create 'Kherson ice cream.' I wanted to create a local signature product so that tourists visiting Kherson would definitely try it—like churros in Spain or stroopwafels in the Netherlands. I wanted 'Kherson ice cream' to be the first thing recommended to the city's visitors."

Kherson ice cream became an obsession for Anna. During the watermelon season, she and her husband made watermelon ice cream and sold it at a minimal price. For the ice cream, they used only local ingredients—Ukrainian milk, cream, and fruits.

Cake – Memories of Childhood

In 2019, the Voskoboynikov couple decided to participate in a competition initiated by the local authorities to create a gastronomic calling card for tourists. Participants had to prepare a cake that would be associated by everyone with the taste of Kherson.

"In the Kherson region, tourism was actively developing at that time," recalls Anna. "From Askania-Nova and the Oleshky Sands to the pink lakes, estuaries, and seaside resorts, the authorities had a simple idea – to amaze the guests of the Kherson region. To give them a souvenir that they could take back to their city."

For a month, Anna pondered how to make the cake directly associated with her hometown. In her childhood, apricots and walnuts grew in the yard. So, she decided to make them the main ingredients of the future cake.

"This cake is a memory of my childhood, associated with my Kherson. I love to do things differently from others, so I wanted this cake to be flourless," Anna shares. "We made meringue layers with walnuts. The cake takes two to three days to prepare: the meringue is mixed with walnuts and dried in the oven for up to six hours so that the layers caramelize. The cream is natural cream cheese with dried apricots and white chocolate. There's no sugar as such in the cake—only white and milk Belgian chocolate. And another of our 'special features' is that the cake can be frozen for up to three months. So people can take it across the country and to relatives abroad."

Anna won the competition among 40 other participants. She was often offered to sell the cake recipe—particularly by large chains. However, she refused. The recipe, name, and appearance of the cake have been patented.

Before the full-scale invasion, the "Kherson" cake was promoted without large advertising campaigns. Word of mouth worked best. The team collaborated with cafes and small shops in various cities, and the cake gradually appeared outside of Kherson. Local media wrote about it, and Ukrainian celebrities like Masha Efrosinina, Lesia Nikitiuk, and Yevhen Synelnykov shared it for free on their social media.

"A year before the invasion, every resident of Kherson began to root for their own," Anna recalls. "For New Year 2022, we sold the maximum number of cakes ever — several thousand, ten times more than we had anticipated. It's conceivable that every third family in Kherson had this cake for New Year's. But I dreamed of more — for our cake to become famous all over Ukraine."

Over the years, Anna's dream came true.

Lost everything in Kherson and chose Vinnytsia

At the outset of the full-scale war, the couple already owned about ten kiosks at the resorts of Zalyznyi Port, Skadovsk, and Lazurne, one kiosk in Odesa, two pastry shops, and two restaurants in Kherson. Anna and Kostyantyn had purchased a former baby food factory and were preparing to transform it into a fully functioning production facility—they jokingly called it the "Willy Wonka factory." It was there that all the products were to be made, with a special focus on their signature "Kherson" cake—the main pride of their craft brand Perfetto, which was established in 2006.

In the first days of the invasion, due to shelling and occupation, Anna and Kostyantyn lost everything—their entire business and the life they had built over the past 15 years.

In the spring, Anna left with the children to visit friends in Chernivtsi, while Kostyantyn went to the capital. To continue working under such conditions and not lose clients, the family turned to competitors in Kyiv—the owners of a gelateria who had themselves gone abroad, but their equipment remained on site. For the first three months, Anna's husband worked there mostly alone: he made ice cream, processed invoices, and delivered the products at night.

In Odesa, there was the only surviving business of the couple — an ice cream kiosk they had opened a couple of years before the full-scale events. Therefore, Anna decided to move there and was already halfway, specifically in Vinnytsia, when the shelling of Odesa began. Then, the woman chose to stay in Vinnytsia.

"The husband asked to go abroad with the children—we have property there," Anna says. "But I didn't want to live and work outside Ukraine, and I didn't want to start a business there. A few months later, Kostya (my husband,"LIGA.net) came to us in Vinnytsia. Whenever I arrive in any Ukrainian city, it feels like home to me – these are our traditions, our language, our culture. I feel like I belong here, but there, I feel like an outsider. That's why I want to live in Ukraine and create great products here."

"Believe me, I had a lot of doubts."

The first Voskoboijniki establishment in Vinnytsia was opened in June 2022, and the second one followed a few months later. Currently, the city has two pastry shops and the family cafe "Amici". The team has expanded from five people initially to about 60.

When we started working in Vinnytsia, believe me, I had a lot of doubts about whether anyone here would be interested in the signature "Kherson" cake," says Anna. "But people tasted it and fell in love with its flavor.

The residents of Vinnytsia liked "Kherson" so much that they started visiting the couple's establishments specifically to try it, recommended it to friends, posted photos on social media—in short, the locals themselves became ambassadors of the cake and its brand.

Over time, the "Kherson" cake became a top item in all of the Voskoboynik venues in Vinnytsia. The second place in sales was taken by "Napoleon," and the third place was the "Vinnytsia Hospitality" cake, an original Perfetto cake, which features cherries—a symbol of Vinnytsia—as its main ingredient.

When Ukrainian military forces liberated Kherson from Russian occupation, a photo of the "Kherson" cake appeared in the background of the "Kherson" sign in the city center. Anna doesn't know exactly where this cake came from, but someone kept it in the freezer for almost nine months of occupation to celebrate the city's liberation.

"They asked me then: 'How did you deliver it there?', recalls Anna. 'But it wasn't us, it was some kind of miracle, a wonder. And we dream a lot about returning our production to Kherson when the war ends. We want to make the cake right there.'"

Anna's team is currently setting up a new location in Vinnytsia for a craft confectionery production. The new space, covering an area of 800 m², will be entirely dedicated to cake making. Simultaneously, they are preparing a complete package of documents and certifications to sell the "Kherson" cake abroad.

Currently, Perfetto makes up to 200 "Kherson" cakes per day. They are sold in Kherson, Kyiv and the surrounding region, Vinnytsia, Lviv, Uman, Ivano-Frankivsk, Dnipro, Poltava, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Odesa and the surrounding region. Exact locations can be found on thepagePerfetto brand on Instagram.

"As long as I have health and strength, I will promote this cake," says Anna Voskoboinyk. "When a star comes to Vinnytsia, I go to the concert with the cake and gift it. When I travel to other cities, I organize presentations and offer free tastings. People from all over Ukraine and even abroad order our cake – and we send it frozen. At first, I was nervous about shipping because I was afraid it could get damaged in transit. Then I received a message from one woman: 'Anichka, I'm from Kherson. I don't care how it looks. I'd lick the box.'"