The Passing of a Cake Legend—“Queen of Cakes” Sylvia Weinstock Leaves a Sweet and Beautiful Legacy
This past holiday season my good friend Warner Roberts gave me a book entitled Sweet Celebrations-The Art of Decorating Beautiful Cakes. The book was written by the legendary New York baker and cake artist Sylvia Weinstock. Most of my close friends know that I learned to bake from my mother when I was very young and I kept those skills active over the years, but really began honing my skills beginning in the summer of 2016 and continue it today. Warner had no idea how much I respected and admired Sylvia Weinstock and loved how she learned her craft. The book she gifted me led me to write a tribute to this remarkable woman who passed away from multiple myeloma this past November at the age of 91. I wanted to showcase her more than 45 years of magnificent work to those who may or may not know of her.
Sylvia Weinstock’s early life offered no clues that she’d one day be the most sought-after baker of wedding cakes for the rich and famous. Long before some of her A-list clients were even born, Sylvia Weinstock seemed headed for a career as a kindergarten teacher. Bronx-born and Brooklyn-raised Sylvia Silver’s family owned both a bakery (which they lived above) and later a liquor store.
At the age of 19, she married fellow Hunter College law student Ben Weinstock. Sylvia earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology at Hunter College in 1951 and a master’s in education from Queens College in 1973. They later moved to Long Island, where she taught elementary school and he practiced law while they raised three daughters. They were happily together for 69 years.
In the early 1970s, the family built a country house near Hunter Mountain, north of Manhattan. While her husband and children skied all day, Sylvia started baking desserts. Renowned New York pastry chef George Keller had retired and had a guesthouse in the area. He took her on as his apprentice. Another friend, William Greenberg, owner of several eponymous Manhattan bakeries, suggested she learn to decorate wedding cakes with flowers. She did, and he started referring customers who needed wedding cakes, which he didn’t make, to her. What is so remarkable about Sylvia’s legacy was that she was in her early 50’s when she began baking for others and did this with no formal culinary or pastry training, except for her time with Keller.
Flowers became Sylvia’s signature cake decoration. She was as committed to cake quality and flavor as she was to her artistry. Her trademark life-like sugar roses were achieved and perfected by disassembling an actual rose, petal by petal. She then laid the petals in a row and duplicated each delicate section with her proprietary confectionary dough. She then reassembled the sugary petals together in the order of the real rose petals. She and her staff went on to use this same technique to create sugar tulips, lilies of the valley, sweet peas, poppies, and any other flower a client could dream of. Each member of the team had a flower they perfected and specialized in making. It was not uncommon for one of Weinstock’s multi-tiered, six-foot (and many times much higher) cakes to be covered in hundreds—sometimes thousands—of edible blossoms. According to her staff over the years, many times this time-consuming process would take one of Sylvia’s team 40 hours to make 100 roses. Sylvia was never satisfied with the look of a cake … until she was. She is credited with saying, “We never count the flowers on a cake. Rather, we add, and add, and add, until it pleases the eye.”
During this period, in 1980, Sylvia Weinstock developed breast cancer. She wanted to be near her Manhattan doctors to have easier access to her treatment. Her husband Ben was tired of practicing law, so they moved into the city. Ben realized her talents could translate into a very successful business. After Weinstock’s recovery, he sold his law practice and became her business partner. Together they founded Sylvia Weinstock Cakes. Being trendy before God got the news, Sylvia & Ben razed a building in TriBeCa and built a four-story townhouse, complete with a commercial kitchen and office. As in her earlier family life, the family would live on the upper two floors. They later added another floor. Their entire basement became a walk-in refrigerator. Ben, an engineer at heart, created numerous inventions to make her cake decorating, architecture and delivery easier. Because he became the main cake delivery guy, Ben termed himself (and had his t-shirts emblazoned with) “Cake Schlepper!”
In her heyday, Sylvia Weinstock Cakes created between 15-20 cakes per week, which allowed her bakery the time to craft perfectly-executed custom creations. The client was involved at every step of the process and with Sylvia’s guidance, both would choose the pastry flavor and fillings, themes, decorations, and design. She and her team always considered themselves bakers and artists. In the 1990s and early 2000’s, her cakes would normally list around $15-20 per slice. Later, depending on the level of creativity and difficulty, the cakes would be $25 per slice and higher. The 10-tiered floral cake for the 2000 wedding of Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones would be priced around $7,000. In 2015, actress Sofia Vergara commissioned a jaw-dropping cake that cost an estimated $50,000 for her wedding to Joe Manganiello. One time she created a bride and groom’s wedding cake and four years later would create a cake for their divorce! Another time she refused to bake a cake for a bride who wanted it to taste like a Twinkie.
Ed Schoenfeld, a well-known Manhattan restaurateur and friend said, “Sylvia was a real New York broad who let you know what she thought. Her floral decorations set a new standard in the business. She changed the way people thought about cakes.” She never hid her distaste for fondant or her dislike of cupcakes. Sylvia unabashedly interrogated her clients for their personal stories. If they had been married before, she wanted to know what went wrong. She had a knack for predicting the success of a marriage after talking with the bride and groom. Sometimes, she once said, “I really wanted to tell the boy to run!”
Creations from “The Queen of Cakes” have been ordered by Oprah Winfrey, Robert DeNiro, Bobby Flay, the Kennedy family, the Clintons, Whitney Houston, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, LeBron James, Tyler Perry, Martha Stewart, Ralph Lauren, Oscar de la Renta, Carolina Herrera and Vera Wang, just to name a few.
While the majority of Sylvia Weinstock Cakes’ clientele live in New York City and the surrounding area, brides and grooms and dessert lovers from around the world can’t get enough of her cakes. Her company (the only or at least one of the very few cake companies) received the title of Registered Shippers, meaning their cakes can travel in cargo or on nonstop charter or private flights. These extremely delicate cakes and decorations didn’t easily make it across an ocean, a desert, or even a continent, but Weinstock and her team figured out a way to do it. It took an exorbitant amount of preparation and her secret rested in the architecture and cake design. Her cake creations were engineered to travel separately and get reassembled at their destination. One of the most extreme examples of this type of attention occurred when a cake produced for the Saudi Royal Family—that was to serve 3,000 guests—flew from New York to the Middle East on the Saudi royal airline. Her cakes have made the journeys to Turkey, Ireland, Mumbai, Abu Dhabi, and beyond. She 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 airplane seat for the precious cargo and assembling it on arrival.
As Sylvia’s husband Ben became ill in 2016 and then passed away in 2018, Sylvia began searching for ways to slow down (if you can call it that). She quietly started revising her business and began lecturing, teaching specialty classes and appeared as a guest judge on baking shows. She also licensed her name and taught her flower-making technique to luxury brands around the world, most notably Ladurée US, the French bakery. She had been working with partners to expand her business by experimenting with a retail line that would bring her brand to other countries. Every now and then, such as the wedding of Jennifer Gates, daughter of Bill and Melinda French Gates, she wore her signature apron, and personally showcased the custom six-tier cake she designed for her, containing sprays of off-white and light pink sugar roses.
Tony Conway, owner of Legendary Events, an Atlanta-based company with services for event planning and décor, catering, florals and several popular venues, was a great friend and working partner of Sylvia’s for many weddings and events. He remarked, “Having the wonderful opportunity to work with Sylvia for 20 years: it was always a pleasure to introduce her to clients to get their vision on their personal cake. Each client always remarked that Sylvia’s cake exceeded their expectation. Staff at hotels, country clubs and event venues were in awe getting to work side by side with her. My most fun times were sharing a martini or two with Sylvia and discussing the next event for her cake!”
With all the lavish weddings at which Sylvia was featured, her own postwar wedding was modest, with just 20 people and a very small simple cake. She was often asked in her later years if she and her husband wanted to renew their vows and throw the kind of bash for themselves that they had staged for so many others, with one of her lavish cakes as the centerpiece. She would say, “No. I don’t need an audience. So what if I didn’t have an elaborate wedding? I got away with the best guy in the world!”
As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, Sylvia and I connected through baking, even though we never met. I will always regret never getting to tell her how much I enjoyed her artistry but the joy she gave lives on through her family, friends, past clients, books, photographs and those who take the time to read the many articles and praises about this stylish trendsetter. Rest well Queen of Cakes! I’m sure you and Ben are sharing and enjoying a martini!
