New York Daily News Article w/Sylvia Weinstock...

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I couldn't resist sharing this great article from the New York Daily Times featuring Sylvia Weinstock. The one thing to know about cakes is Sylvia is the "Queen" of taste and style when it comes to event cakes. Her wedding cakes are something stand apart from them all.

NY wedding cake icon dishes out the secrets of her stunning treats
BY PATRICK HUGUENIN
Sunday, December 14th 2008, 4:00 AM


Sylvia Weinstock has long been the wedding cake queen of New York. In the past three decades, she has risen from home kitchen roots to the kind of culinary fame that invites, among other accolades, a name-check on "Gossip Girl." Her lavish book "Sylvia Weinstock's Sensational Cakes" (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $45) shows off a generous helping of buttercream. We caught up with Weinstock for the secrets behind her show-stoppers........

In the introduction, it says that you had no cake at your wedding. Why not?
That's true. When we got married, we were very young and very poor - we were two college students! I wore a gray dress that I wore for 10 years. Didn't have a wedding cake. Didn't have a honeymoon. We were college students and we went back to school. I went to Washington Irving High School and then to Hunter College. My husband went to Queens College and NYU Law. So we're very committed to this wonderful city.

You also say that you hate fondant. Too chewy?
You see, people who like fondant like it because of the way it looks. But if you're a food person, you're not going to eat that. I also think that if you have great skills, as my staff does, you can make buttercream look just like fondant. Every one of those cakes in the pictures are made with buttercream, only it doesn't look it. They're smooth, and they're well put together.


Your flowers are your trademark, and they are shockingly realistic. What's the process to making them?
How I first started was to get a real flower, like a real rose, and to take each petal off and lay them in a row to see how it's structured, and then try to make them in sugar and work it backward. So you make the core and then the inner petals and then the outer petals and then you put it next to a real flower to see, what do I do to make it look even better? In that book, there are photographs of two flowerpots of orchids side by side; one is cake. Our goal is to try to duplicate as closely as possible what nature does.

And you do it by hand?
It's a sugar dough; you roll it out, and you cut each petal to shape and put it in the palm of your hand, and you build up the petals and you put them together. So if you have a peony, you've got many petals. A big, fat rose has many petals. [It can take] thousands of hours of work.

How did you develop this goal of imitating nature so closely?
I started almost 30 years ago. At that time, people put fresh flowers on a cake. I'd seen Mexicans make flowers out of bread dough, and when I learned to make this sugar and I could roll it thin and stretch it, I realized, why can't you make a flower out of it?

What were the first reactions you got?
When I started in the '80s in New York City, everybody thought, "Wow, not only is this beautiful, but the cake is delicious." And the reason is because you could make these flowers in advance and stockpile them and you can put them on a freshly baked cake. So the cake you eat is maybe 24 hours old. Some cakes back then, they could spend three weeks decorating them, so who could eat that?

Have you had a chance to make a great cake for yourself recently?
Sunday morning, I make a yeast coffee cake. For me. I happen to like yeast coffee cakes, so my husband and I will do that.

I've only had ones made with baking powder.
You've never had a yeast coffee cake? Oh, no. Try yeast. Yeast is wonderful. You do it in the morning, let it rest, roll it, let it rest, and then you put it in the oven and let it rise. You'll have it in the afternoon. You should try yeast. It's easy.

And what's your favorite dessert cake?
I love yellow butter cake, and I love it with lemon curd and fresh raspberries. I always find that delicious.