Sublime Online: Cake Decorating
Buttercream roses, rainbow sprinkles, and other kinds of ornamental sugar
As all my loved ones know, my second favorite hobby in the world is baking and decorating an extravagant layer cake (my first favorite hobby is writing this newsletter for you). I’ve always loved to bake, but my affair with cake decorating in particular started in 2020, when I decided to make my own pandemic birthday cake even though it would just be eaten by me and my parents. It was pistachio, covered in American buttercream, too tall, and totally lopsided. Since then, I’ve gotten much better. I’ve perfected my flavor combinations, streamlined my process for my tiny Brooklyn kitchen, and learned all the fancy techniques that elevate a cake (torting the layers frozen, Swiss meringue buttercream, mascarpone mousse, candied nuts, any-fruit curd). My house overflows with purchases from Whisk, Tarzian, and NY Cake: bench scrapers, precut parchment paper, edible lustre dust, a dozen cake pans. In 2021, I started selling cakes on Instagram, and while I eventually scaled that cottage business down, I still love to bake for friends’ birthdays and the occasional wedding.
The one thing I haven’t managed to accomplish is tidy, traditional piping.1 It’s not the end of the world — I make it work, eschewing prim and proper for wild and wacky (which, thankfully, is trendy enough in the pastry world right now). A few weekends ago, I frosted a wedding cake with random ruffles and rosettes, inspired by the bride’s love of Simone Rocha. A true story, but also a convenient front for my inability to frost an even border or a neat set of swags.
Thankfully, there’s a long history of literature dedicated to exactly this problem. While video tutorials are certainly a better medium for actually learning how to pipe, it is vintage cake decorating cookbooks and pamphlets that provide the most inspiration to me. In addition to exquisitely decorated cakes, they are, unsurprisingly, filled with some very fun design: sumptuous art direction, expressive type, pages and pages of piping tip samples. Even cake decorating itself feels like graphic design, or art direction, to me. It requires an understanding of Gestalt principles, an inventive use of color, the ability to make an emphatic aesthetic choice. What is a piping bag if not a brush filled with edible ink?
So for today’s edition of Sublime Online, I scoured the Internet for my favorite covers and pages from books and other printed matter celebrating the art of cake decorating. Grab a fork and enjoy!
Covers
Two different approaches to the same color: the sugarpaste elegance expected from a 1960s housewife and the in-your-face Barbie pink of the ‘80s.
Very brown, with retro type. Both of these books remind me of the Family Circle cookbook series — approachable and oriented toward regular families who might not have the same time or inclination to decorate a cake in the flowery, uber-feminine style that publications like Good Housekeeping pushed in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
In the ‘90s, we’re back to having fun! It’s very pink, but feels more oriented towards kids than housewives. The piped border is endlessly inspiring to me. Someone needs to hire me to design a cake cookbook so I can recreate this, stat! I also love the serif type, and the original Cakemate tulip branding (once again they massacred my boy). My mom still has a couple bottles of those rainbow sprinkles that I’m sure are radioactive by now.
Front Matter
The juxtaposition between the frilly tiered wedding cake and the groovy, loosey-goosey typeface on this half title page! Look at the lowercase ‘t’ in “decorating” — he’s gonna spin off this planet, baby.
A lovely illustrated endpaper that captures the broken eggs and spilled sprinkles that come with the territory.
The art direction here made me gasp — the ditsy floral printed seamless, the perfect buttercream rosettes waiting to be plucked from their parchment squares, the red-brown color of the title type… Exquisite!
Approachable art direction, accessible food styling, and classy type, topped off with a cherry of an ampersand.
Interiors
Real cakeheads know this list wouldn’t be complete without including anything from a Wilton Yearbook, an annual catalog that showcased cake design trends and techniques. In the front half of the catalog, the photos are of splashy, ambitious cakes, but it’s the instructional tips and product offerings in the back that I find the most compelling. Above, the gentle illustrations of a yellow cake with pink frosting reminds me of Highlights Magazine. Below, the demonstration of different piping tips one can purchase is a graphic journey in and of itself.
We are revisiting the Cakemate pamphlet because I’m still thinking about it. I must have had this in my house growing up because those ice cream cone clowns are scratching a real itch in my head.
We’ll end on an elegant note with this beautiful image of a princess cake. The shiny chrome of the cake stand, the various piping techniques on the petit fours, the gentle pink curlicue of buttercream lazing out of the icing bag — give this food stylist a raise!
Thanks for reading! The intersection of baking and design combines my two favorite things, so don’t hesitate if you have anything to share (cakes! cookbooks! bakery branding!). I really love it when people send me their Perfect Designs they’ve seen in the wild, keep it up. See you next week! 🆗
On my Instagram, you’ll see a lot of basketweave piping, which looks super fancy but it is actually very simple to do. I’m talking about the impossibly neat, extravagant piping on tiered cakes you might see in Marie Antoinette or an ‘80s wedding photo album.
Such a visual delight- thank you!
I love your cakes!!! The Gemini Bake used to sell wall hangings that were just frosting samples done in some kind of plastic (?) that I was always obsessed with (https://www.thegeminibake.com/shop) which got me obsessed with the different indices of frosting that exist. The Wilton Yearbook one is so good!