Wedding cake baker to the stars Sylvia Weinstock died Monday at her New York City home. She was 91.
A post on the Instagram page of the “Queen of Cakes” said "the cake designer who pioneered an industry of towering, sugar-flower wedding cakes died peacefully in her home in Tribeca, surrounded by her loving family."
She is survived by three daughters.
Weinstock, originally an elementary school teacher on Long Island, didn't start baking professionally until she was 50 years old and had survived breast cancer.
"In 1975, I went skiing with my family. I don’t like to ski, so I baked instead,” she told The New York Times in 2019.
When a New York City baker who wouldn't do wedding cakes started passing along orders to her, a business was born.
She had baked cakes for Billy Joel, Mariah Carey and Sofía Vergara and had appeared on NBC’s “TODAY,” “Gossip Girl” and “Top Chef.”
She was also a guest judge on the pilot of the Netflix hit “Nailed It,” and was invited back to judge a more recent holiday episode.
“While Sylvia was known for her A-list clientele, everyone who ordered a cake got Sylvia’s celebrity touch,” the post on her Instagram said.
The bespectacled baker made her black goggle-like glasses her signature, and stamped them on every cake. She despised fondant, and would only work with buttercream, and baked over a thousand cakes a year.
"Her magical confections appeared at weddings and celebrations in the United States, Japan, China, Middle East, the Caribbean and Europe,” the Instagram post said.
"She nurtured generations of adoring fans, and it was common for her to create celebration cakes for a couple, their children, and their children’s children, for all the milestones of their lives," it continued.
Weinstock told the New York Times that her job gave her "great pleasure."
"Most people can’t remember the food, music, or flowers, but they remember the cake 30 years later," she said. "I have a moment in everyone’s wedding, which fills my heart."
