For some brides in white gowns, a fairytale wedding is inseparable from Vera Wang's gowns, elegant venues like the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan, and eye-catching cakes made by Sylvia Weinstock, whose gorgeous, multi-layered candy leads Bon Appétit magazine called her the "Da Vinci of the wedding cake world."

Winstock was a teacher at Long Island School and survived breast cancer at the age of 50. He became a full-time baker and a star cake maker. He is known for making delicious and beautiful custom cakes. She is good at decorating her cakes with botanically correct sugar flowers-roses, violets, calla lilies and poppies, each petal is handmade-but she is also a master of trompe lapping design, the production looks like Car, tie, deer cake, snakeskin shoes, a box of wine and a box of cigars.

As she said, her cream creations were offered to the Kennedy family, the Rockefeller family, the Clinton family, and "anyone who walks in and wants something special." Made a box-shaped cake for designer Steve Madden with a pair of shoes inside; she made miniature cakes shaped like gem Faberge eggs for the Russian Embassy in Washington. "I designed Freud's sofa in Vienna," she once said, "as two shrinking wedding cakes about to get married."

Winstock died at his home in Manhattan on November 22, at the age of 91. Her family announced her death in a statement shared by her old friend and business partner Nanci Weaver, but did not specify the cause of death.

With her short silver hair, oversized round glasses and a witty sense of humor, Winstock is a cheerful force in the world of luxurious weddings and events. In recent years, she has served as a guest judge on baking shows, and has contributed to Food Network’s "Chopping Candy" and Netflix's "Dingding!"

"We all adore her. She could have become a borscht comedian," said event planner Marcy Blum, who often collaborates. In a telephone interview, she recalled that Winstock would confuse and question the bride when discussing cakes in her Manhattan store: "Then what does your fiance do? Does he make money? Can you live like this? Do you like his mother?"

Blum said: "When you buy a Chanel suit, it feels like a little Coco Chanel." "This is part of the experience. People will try to bargain with her"-her cake starts at about 15 pieces per piece. Dollars—"Then she would say,'Listen: you walk into Chanel and tell them can you buy a cheaper Chanel? This is Chanel, that's it."

Weinstock baked for celebrities including Mariah Carey, Michael Douglas, LeBron James, Billy Joel, Ralph Lauren, Jennifer Lopez, Eddie Murphy, Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey, and sometimes went to Kuwait or Japan to provide her work. The cake flies in the cargo and is assembled on arrival, with thousands of sugar flowers added by hand.

Although many bakers use fudge, a hard icing with consistency like Play-Doh, Winstock refuses to touch it, saying that fudge is "cheap and easy" and is almost inedible. Instead, she uses only cream, using egg whites, sugar and butter to make very realistic cakes. She made cakes shaped like Hermès handbags or tall white orchids, and these cakes were placed in "jars" coated with brown cream. Others are more whimsical, being designed to look like a pair of pugs in suits, or like a cowboy riding a bull holding a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Her own tastes are more fruity-she prefers lemon curd and raspberry-and plant flavors. Sugar Flower helped her start her own business in the 1980s, and she took great care to imitate real things to shape her petals. "Every time I make a new flower, I buy a real flower, take it apart, count the petals, and look at the shade and color," she told the New York Times. Even if she determined the formula, the process of making the petals was very hard. As she said, one of her assistants can "make 100 roses in a typical week", using sugar, egg whites, gelatin, gum arabic and food coloring to make petals.

In 2004, she told Inc. magazine: "This is a fascinating business because everyone values ​​their occasion and personal value. I respect it." I worry. I worry. Unless I hear that the cake is very happy, I have been checking my phone. "

Sylvia Silver was born in the Bronx on January 28, 1930. She grew up near Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She lived upstairs from her parents' store, which sold liquor and later turned into a bakery.

At the age of 19, she married Benjamin Weinstock while studying psychology at Hunter College in New York City. Since they couldn't afford a luxurious wedding banquet, they offered "a little honey cake and a glass of wine", and then settled in the Masapekwa community on Long Island. Winstock received a bachelor's degree in 1951, later completed a master's degree in education, and raised three daughters while teaching in elementary school.

“Living in the suburbs is a huge learning curve for me,” she told the Wall Street Journal in 2014. Confidence around the stove. All of these are vital to my cake business. She added that as her children grow up and understand who they want to be in life, "I learned that I am not alone-one of those suburban ladies who play cards and country clubs." "

She also learned that she was attracted by entertainment and cooking, and took French, Russian and Chinese cuisine courses to expand her repertoire. In the early 1970s, when her family built a country house in the resort town of Hunter in New York State, she preferred to bake bread in the kitchen instead of skiing with her husband and children.

She sold the extra cake to a local restaurant, and at a dinner, she met André Soltner, the chef and owner of the Lutèce restaurant in New York. On his advice, she worked as an apprentice for pastry chef George Keller for the next few years. George Keller ran a hotel near her holiday home and taught her how to make yeast cakes, croissants, pies and Other snacks.

When Winstock was diagnosed with cancer in 1980, she learned more about baking. "I don't know how many lives I have left," she said, but knew she wanted to spend the rest of her life in this city. Her husband left his law firm and they moved to Manhattan, where she baked for Carlyle’s private events and started making wedding cakes with the encouragement of William Greenberg, a senior The baker in the Upper East Side, he delivers to customers.

In 1983, she and her husband purchased a burnt-down warehouse in Tribeca. They rebuilt it into a four-story townhouse, moved to the top floor and opened their shop Sylvia Weinstock Cakes on some floors below. Weinstock specializes in cake design and decoration, while her husband helps with engineering, devising new ways to make cakes that sometimes reach 15 feet tall.

"When we started, there were no tools available, so he would see me do something and make tools for me," she told the Wall Street Journal, noting that the creation included a rotating table and a petal cutter for sugar flowers . "Everyone wants to know why our cake never collapses," she added, "it's because of him."

Winstock closed the store in 2016 to spend more time with her husband who died two years later. By then, she had begun to expand her business in new directions, teaching courses and authorizing her name to stores in Japan and Kuwait. She also collaborated with French pastry company Ladurée and wrote books such as "Sweet Celebration" (1999), in which she suggested that the decoration of the cake "fruits and flowers should start 10 to 12 weeks in advance".

The survivors include her three daughters Ellen Weldon, Amy Slavin and Janet Weinstock Isa; and six grandchildren.

Winstock made the last wedding cake after retiring last month: a white six-layer cake for Bill Gates and Melinda Frank Gates’ eldest daughter Jennifer Gates and equestrian runners The wedding of Nayel Nassar.

"The cake is a showcase. It is second only to the bride," Winstock previously told the New York Times. "Most people don’t remember food, music or flowers, but they will remember cakes in 30 years. It gave me a lot of fun. I gave them something unforgettable. I was at everyone’s wedding There is always a moment, which makes my heart surging."