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Sweet Thoughts
Some artists create masterpieces with paint, others with clay or charcoal. Sylvia Weinstock uses flour, sugar, and buttercream.
THE MASTER BAKER, who has been called the “Leonardo da Vinci of cakes,” made her foray into the world of sweets when her family went on a ski trip in the seventies. Weinstock, who doesn’t ski, stayed home and baked—and baked and baked. Soon family and friends were praising her confections and she decided to sell them to local restaurants.
“At that time, no one was doing beautiful and delicious cakes,” says Weinstock. “It was either-or. Beautiful, but not good to eat.”
Weinstock mastered both, and her cakes became increasingly elaborate. She has created eight-foot-tall, multitiered towers decorated with lavish flowers and cakes shaped like giraffes, trees, and the planet earth. And like the cakes themselves, the process is intricate.
“After we interview the client, we sketch out several ideas to see if we’ve interpreted her fantasy correctly,” explains Weinstock, who creates a few thousand cakes every year. “Then we do a schematic of the internal structure. It’s like cake architecture. We have a wood shop and we figure out what supports in wood we’ll need to hold the cake together. We bake the cake 24 hours in advance. Then we fill it, chill it, ice it, and then decorate it.”
The painstaking process often ends with a flight. Weinstock and her staff have hand-delivered cakes to Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland, Japan, and all over the United States.
And while Weinstock’s edible extravaganzas have satiated the sweet tooth of celebrities from Eddie Murphy to Mariah Carey, the person she would most like to bake one for is the president.
“I am not starstruck,” explains Weinstock. “But I would love to meet people who are leaders in the world, the thinkers.” Visit sylviaweinstock.com.
Sylvia Weinstock will appear on January 8 at the 54th Washington Antiques Show, “Art & Antiques in Red,” January 8-11 at the Katzen Arts Center at American University, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW, 202-388-9560; washingtonantiques.org. Her new book, Sensational Cakes (Stewart, Tabori, & Chang; $45), is available through amazon.com.
BY KELLY DINARDO
PHOTOGRAPH BY SARI GOODFRIEND
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