Beautiful & Elegant Cakes

Charming Patterns

Patti Paige was influenced by the charming patterns and shapes of 1950s textiles; a simple peach background showcases colorfully hand-painted cookies.

Fondant cake with cookies, $14 per
slice, Baked Ideas, New York

Haute Stuff!

Haute stuff! These delicate, pearl-studded blooms have high-fashion roots: They’re based on a Sondra Roberts clutch and an Oscar de la Renta gown.

Fondant cake with flowers, $12 per
slice, Wedding Cakes by Kim Payne,
Cheyenne, OK; stand, Bountiful

Italian Marble

With a nod to elegant Italian marble, Wendy Sherwood created a pleasing patchwork of blush, gold, and silver white-chocolate tiles.

Fondant cake, $15 per serving, La
Forêt, Napa, CA; stand, Robert
Edward Woodworking

wedding-cakes01Sexy Snakeskin

Inspired by sexy snakeskin and glossy pearls, Kerry Vincent hand-stenciled a python pattern and topped it with borders reminiscent of embroidered English lace.

Hand-painted fondant cake with
gum-paste flowers, $25 per slice,
Romantic Wedding Cakes by Kerry
Vincent, Tulsa, OK

Jeweltoned Cafe

Jeweltoned café wallpaper from the 1950s led blogger and former cake designer Carrie Sellman to craft these eyecatching tiers covered with mod fondant blooms.

Cake, Half Baked—The Cake Blog;
stand, Sarah’s Stands

Jackson Pollock

Katie Schultz’s cake, inspired by Jackson Pollock’s groundbreaking drip-and-splatter technique, is a sugar masterpiece.

Fondant cake with colored chocolate,
$10 per slice, Sugar Pine Bakery,
Lake Tahoe, CA

So Refined!

To capture the refined look of an 18th-century necklace, Maureen Duffy linked dramatic sugar pearl-studded flowers with hand-beaded accents.

Fondant cake with sugar flowers, $18
per slice, Maureen P. Duffy,
[email protected], Floral Park, NY;
stand, Sarah’s Stands

The Gold Standard

Talk about a gold standard! Deborah Lauren paired the luster of an Indian sari with a classic peony crafted from sugar.

Gold-embossed fondant cake, $16
per slice, City Sweets & Confections,
New York

Blossoms

John Rota displayed lush anemone blossoms using whimsical tier stacking influenced by his nephew, who loves the game Jenga. Careful with that knife!

Fondant cake with gum-paste
flowers, $15 per slice, John Rota
Cake Artistry, Cake Crumbs, Encino,
CA

Art Deco

Colette Peters based her white-on-white confection on an art-deco chandelier. The flowers, pearls, and, yes, even the pedestal base were crafted from sugar.

Fondant cake and pedestal with
gum-paste flowers and pearls, $16
per slice, Colette’s Cakes, New York

Showstopper

Why use lots of flowers when you can have one mega showstopper? That’s what Miche Bacher and Nanao Anton thought after seeing a Yumi Katsura gown featuring a pretty peony.

Fondant cake with hand-painted
sugar-dough petals, $20 per slice,
Sacred Sweets, Greenport, NY;
stand, Versace for Rosenthal

Spring Fever

A case of spring fever led Renata Papadopoulos to design this sunshine yellow confection with lacy flowers in the broderie-anglaise (English-embroidery) style.

Fondant cake with hand-cut and
molded flowers, $10 per slice, Lovely
Cakes, Norwalk, CT