The Most Exquisite Wedding Cake Artists Today

Many of us,

when we were girls, dreamed at some point of opening a bakery. The bakery of my girlhood dreams was part flower shop—surprise, surprise—a Swiss chalet style building with flowers hand-painted on shutters, and great window boxes overflowing with flora.

The doors would open to a space fragrant with fresh flowers and baking bread (how would those comforting fragrances combine? Unclear.). Daily, this bakery would offer be-ribboned boxes of pastries and bundles of flowers, little things to uplift an ordinary moment. It was a bit like Holly Golightly nibbling a Danish outside the Tiffany’s window, only in my version, the heroine longed for flowers with her breakfast pastry, not diamonds.

What I would learn from opening one part of this dream business (the flower part) is that behind the poetry, the fragrance, and the pure, uncomplicated magic of it all, is quite a lot of skill-- and quite a lot of unglamorous work. But I also realized that my dream was, in many ways, too simple. I did not, in this simplistic vision, imagine that flowers and cakes could be elevated into the realm of fine art. I never, in my daydream, lifted either the pastry or the flowers to the level of expression and interpretation so sublimely realized by today’s finest wedding artists.

Cake artistry, along with floral design is, I would argue, the service in which skill is most apparent. I marvel at the delicacy and intricacy of sugar flowers, so lifelike and complex they seem garden-picked. I know intimately the skill required to create art from flowers, but this art fashioned from flour and sugar renders me speechless. I sense behind every fine cake an incommunicable amount of discipline, care, craft, precision, and love.

While researching cake artists, I found they had something stunning in common with floral designers: many of the finest in both fields have a background in ballet. The discovery, to me, made perfect sense. Having spent my childhood and early adulthood training as a figure skater and dancer, I knew the qualities I looked for in a subsequent career. I intimately understand the discipline and physicality of floristry— a certain intensity that called to me just as strongly as the sheer beauty of the work. And then there is the need to express, the longing to pour out movement to music, that is so difficult to find anywhere else, and draws one to creative pursuit after creative pursuit. Dancers especially long for work that is all-consuming: something to pour one’s entire body and heart into, a day filled with regimented hours— a day that mirror the rigors of training. When I look at the cakes on this list, I see all of this— a stunning devotion to training, discipline, artistry, and craft.

“Cakes can be an ode to couture, to flower gardens, or to slow food.”

When a cake becomes a work of art, it speaks for itself: an exquisite, serene confection that carries the sweetness of childhood longings and the seriousness of fine art. If any wedding service leaves me in awe, it is that of a cake artist—especially one who converses with fashion, architecture, and nature. Some artists create cakes that borrow inspiration from Classical buildings, museums, or parlors; others create pieces that evoke wildflower walks, connection with nature, and time spent foraging wild strawberries. These cakes can be an ode haute couture, to flower gardens, or to the slow food movement. Regardless of their signature style, each cake in my list is chosen for its unique artistry, for some certain je ne sais quoi. They are so much more exquisite than anything I imagined in those early daydreams— and yet in some ways, they carry the essence of a dream, a feeling of sheer happiness and delight. What is true of couture is true of cakes as well; writing of runway fashion, Adam Gopnik mused on the moment when clothes gave way to something more surreal: “It’s all too much, and that’s where the loveliness— the couture moment— begins… Couture is a romantic cartoon. It is a caricature of a romantic impulse, with a cartoon’s energy and lighthearted poetry too. The thing you feel in a couture moment isn’t ‘What a wonderful dress,’ or, as you do with higher kinds of art, ‘What a good place the world is,’ but, more simply, ‘I’m in love.’”

Read on and prepare to be transported to clouds of buttercream, swirls of frosting, and visions of gardens where only sugar flowers grow…

Cakes & Photos by Atelier Soo

Atelier Soo

If one cake artist speaks to my heart, to everything I love about weddings and want to preserve, it is Atelier Soo. The majority of my saved Instagram photos come from her delightful feed, and it’s little wonder why. Soo’s touch is so light, ethereal, exquisite; her buttercream flowers are the most enchanting I have ever beheld. What I love most of all is the palette of muted pastels she favors: mint green, apricot, blush pink, lavender, pale blue—colors so gentle they seem like a kiss of a color. Look for tiny cakes christened with flowers, and even frosted bouquets of sugar flower stems. There is something positively angelic about Atelier Soo’s aesthetic, something hopeful and pure. How blessed would the wedding planning process be if every service were this pure, sweet, hopeful, and lovely to experience.

Cakes & Photos | Atelier Soo

Cakes & Photos | Atelier Soo

2. Jasmine Rae Cakes

The sculptural creations of Jasmine Rae rivet the eye; how perfectly at home they would look encased in glass, at a museum, as well as on your wedding table. Drawing inspiration from the essential elements and from natural beauty everywhere, Jasmine Rae cakes evoke the movement of water, wind, and blossoms, and explore the intricacy of minerals and manmade structures. Each cake has an architectural feeling to it, and a coolness and elegance that must be experienced to be fully understood. These creations feel alive and abstract—the rice paper floral work more O’Keeffe Iris than predictable peony, the windswept movement of the cakes like a gust of sea breeze or a sweeping, chiffon skirt. Rae seems to work in symbiotic relationship with her cakes, as a skilled Ikebana artist would her flower arrangements, revealing both her touch and her willingness to surrender to what her materials naturally want to do. A quality of listening and responding is evident in these sentient, sensitive pieces. Rae’s exceptional work with rice paper creates diaphanous curtains, gauzy, gossamer shapes, and flowing lines. These cakes feel contemplative and abstract rather than razzle-dazzle, giving off an aura of intellectual beauty.

Cakes & Photos | Jasmine Rae Cakes

3. Maggie Austin Cake

“Her creations are the crème de la crème of fine cakes.”

No list of beautiful cakes would be complete without the inimitable Maggie Austin, an icon whose aesthetic and approach placed her in the vanguard of fine art and garden-inspired cake artists. Her sugar flower technique, instantly recognizable for its uncanny botanical resemblance, inspired the work of countless artists today, who either trained under Ms. Austin or found themselves inspired by her. Her creations are the crème de la crème of fine cakes, and on a personal note, were some of the pieces that first caused me fall in love with the wedding world. A Maggie Austin piece is more than a cake; it’s an investment in art and couture, a spectacle waiting to be admired and adored.

Cakes & Photos | Maggie Austin Cake

4. Nadia & Co.

An artist, pastry chef, watercolorist, and undying romantic, Nadia & Co. lends her signature artistry to everything from hand-painted porcelain to toile tablecloths, bespoke teas to couture candies, and awe-inspiring wedding cakes and sweetscapes. A Francophile at heart, Nadia’s creations would be perfectly at home at any high tea at the Riz Paris. An innate sense of fashion and a whimsical streak characterizes Nadia’s work; give her full artistic license to create not only a cake but a sweetscape. In these, a suite of accessories-- pastries, candies, and confections artfully displayed in goblets, compotes, and glass jars-- surround the cake, the focal point of a fully realized design. Nadia describes herself as “a dreamer of ice cream bubble baths, quintessential tea parties, romantic imagery, pattern and all things excessively beautiful”—and those fancies are translated in a collection that feels feminine, fashionable, and frankly a whole lot of fun.

5. Yip Studio

Rockstar and rebel brides will respond to Yip Studio’s “bespoke carved & mossy rock cakes” which look (in the best possible way) like something you would find in a very fashionable alien’s garden. Rocky or moss-covered bases are covered in Italian meringue buttercream and reveal jeweled fruits, sliced at their sexiest angles (think alluring figs and passionfruit) and found or foraged flora. These little rocks can be the foundation for Chinese gardens or wild strawberry patches; at any rate, they make a wonderful conversation starter, and act like a piece of sculpture for the table. But the inventiveness doesn’t stop with the cake’s exterior; slice into them and you will unearth delightfully offbeat, vegan flavors. Typical of the brand? Oolong rose lychee rock cake with a strawberry moss exterior, mossy matcha, lychee passionfruit garden, vegan yuzu cake with yuzu curd and yuzu shiso-infused buttercream, and a ‘watermelon tourmaline’ cake which conceals Autumn spices, pumpkin, and fig flavors. And the celebratory, see-through package that you get to take the cake home in? It makes these cakes feel as ceremonial, as much of an event as opening a little blue Tiffany’s box or carrying a Birkin bag.

Photos & Cakes | Yip Studio

6. Winifred Kristé Cake

Specializing in hand-painted cakes, wafer paper, and sugar paper flowers, Winifred Kristé treats cakes as a canvas for fine art. Her refined sugar flower work, with its hint of Victoriana, reveals her training as a student of Maggie Austin, but Winifred Kristé has found a way to honor this rich background while emerging with a style uniquely her own. ‘Impeccable’ is the word that comes to mind as one takes in works of precision, polish, clarity, and elegance. Most captivating are the framed artwork and vignette cakes, which display a work of Impressionist art or create a stage scene (where the Royal Ballet could surely appear to perform Giselle or Sleeping Beauty).

Photos & Cakes | Winifred Kristé Cake

8. Ballerina Baker

Demonstrating the discipline and artistry of her dance career, Ballerina Baker crafts pieces that are as exquisite and exacting as a principal dancer’s solo. It is the dancer’s special gift to execute exceedingly difficult tasks with a light touch, rendering the most complicated steps seemingly effortless, effervescent. And of course, pure technique only comes to life when delivered with artistry and expression— something more intangible, ineffable. These principles are as true in baking as in dancing, for, “At is essence,” writes author Erica Bauermeister, “a cake is actually a delicate chemical equation— a balance between air and structure. You give your cake too much structure, and it becomes tough. Too much air and it literally falls apart.” Ballerina Baker’s cakes marry technique with artistry in a way that, perhaps, only a dancer’s creations could. One can easily see in this cake traces of tutus and tulle, satin ribbon and that ever-so-subtle ballet pink— glimmers of a past career shimmering in her present, dazzling pursuits.