US baker hailed as the 'da Vinci of wedding cakes'

NEW YORK • American cake designer Sylvia Weinstock, who took the art of baking to new heights with her 3m-tall wedding cakes and their garlands of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of hand-painted sugar flowers, died on Monday last week at her home in Manhattan. She was 91.

Her daughters Janet Weinstock Isa and Ellen Weldon said she had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma in the summer.

Weinstock was best known for her elaborate wedding cakes, with flowers crafted petal by petal and cascading down over multiple tiers of buttercream frosting.

Some creations towered so high that they dwarfed the baker herself. American food magazine Bon Appetit called her "the Leonardo da Vinci of wedding cakes".

But she also baked novelty cakes in the shapes of cars, dogs or other beloved items for birthdays and other special occasions.

After making a wedding cake for one couple, she made another four years later for their divorce.

Her clientele included the late singer Whitney Houston, basketball star LeBron James, actor Robert De Niro, talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, lifestyle guru Martha Stewart and various Kennedys and Kardashians.

Even bitter political foes could agree that major events were best entrusted to her. She was the choice of the Clintons and the Trumps, who ordered a 1.8m-tall, 13-layer confection for the wedding of former United States president Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump in 2009.

Weinstock did not start baking desserts until she was in her 50s, in the early 1980s.

At the time, wedding cakes were generally straightforward affairs - a tier or two with white frosting, sometimes sculpted with fondant icing, sometimes adorned with fruit or flowers.

Weinstock introduced a new level of extravagance. She took apart real flowers, examined each petal for its precise shade and contour, then produced floral-draped architectural stunners in the shape of rose-studded topiaries, baskets of speckled rubrum lilies or bouquets of pink, purple and crimson anemones. On occasion, they rose 4.5m high.

"We never count the flowers on a cake," she told InStyle magazine in 2014. "Rather, we add and add and add until it pleases the eye. That could be hundreds or thousands."

The process was so painstaking, she said, one artist could spend a 40-hour work week creating just 100 roses.

"Her floral decorations set a new standard in the business," Manhattan restaurateur Ed Schoenfeld, who was a close friend of Weinstock, said in an interview.

"She changed the way people thought about cakes."

Weinstock also developed recipes so that her confections could travel anywhere and retain their freshness.

She and her husband would often escort the cakes, sometimes buying an aeroplane seat for the precious cargo and assembling them on arrival.

She once made a cake to feed 3,000 people for the Saudi royal family, who had it delivered on a royal jet.

Weinstock's creations did not come cheap.

Colombian-American actress Sofia Vergara commissioned a five-tier cake with thousands of intricate sugar flowers for her 2015 wedding to actor Joe Manganiello.

The estimated cost: US$50,000.

In addition to her artistry, Mr Schoenfeld said, Weinstock propelled her business by sheer force of personality. "She was a real New York broad who let you know what she thought," he said.

A student of psychology who was happily married, Weinstock unapologetically interrogated her clients for their personal stories.

If they had been married before, she wanted to know what had gone wrong.

She also claimed an ability to predict the success of a marriage after speaking with the bride and groom. Sometimes, she once said, she wanted to "tell the boy to run".

In addition to Isa and Weldon, Weinstock is survived by another daughter, Amy Slavin, and six grandchildren.

Her husband, Mr Benjamin Weinstock, died in 2018 at 93.

NYTIMES