by Mary Carter Sophie is having a slumber party. Her 36 inch, pink and white cake is in the shape of the number eight. Little marzipan girls in colorful sleeping bags adorn the upper portion of the eight, while the bottom is littered with items dear to Sophie. A yellow teddy bear. A pink phone. A kitten. Harry is turning fifty. He sits on a couch with a remote in one hand and a bag of potato chips in the other. He’s watching the Yankees on television. He’s an adorable couch potato turning 50. Amy’s bat mitzvah is coming up. She likes to play soccer and read Nancy Drew. I’m not sure what “Jenny” is celebrating, but I know she loves Bloomingdales and Manolo Blahnik shoes. Jimmy is two years old and loves fire engines. Sophie, Harry, Amy, Jenny and Jimmy. I’ve never met any of them, yet I secretly relish their celebrations, as I stand in front of the windows of Creative Cakes on 74th Street between 1st and York, marveling at the edible sculptures that appear in the windows on a daily, rotating basis, and stop short of licking the glass. The man behind the icing curtain is self-described “cake artist” Bill Schutz. A sole proprietor, Bill has been making whimsical, claymation-ish, cake sculptures for the public since 1979. Behind the small wooden table where you can sit and leaf through albums of Cakes-of-Celebrations-Past, are headshots of the rich and famous. Eddie Murphy, Tom Cruise, Sarah Jessica Parker, Cindy Crawford and Martha Stewart are a few among many to have had a celebration marked with a Creative Cake original. I don’t know about you, but I think if you’ve made it to the point where you can make a Scrabble board cake for Martha, you’re baking in the big leagues. Whether you want a three dimensional taxi cab, a Monopoly board detailing your life, or a People Magazine cover with your picture scanned in icing sheets and food coloring, Bill’s the man for the job. Prices start at $275 and go up according to complexity and size. The smallest cake feeds 25 people and although the skies the limit with the design, don’t bother getting fancy with the ingredients, he only makes chocolate fudge cake with vanilla butter cream icing. Consultations are by appointment only and from the looks his busy calendar, New Yorkers have an insatiable sweet tooth and a lot to celebrate, so make sure you plan three to four weeks in advance. Lastly, take plenty of pictures and prepare to feel a healthy dose of guilt slicing into your cake—but go ahead and do it anyway—because just like the award winning sand castle you built at the beach last summer, if you can’t bring yourself to knock it down, the bully next to you or mother nature will. Besides, it’s a celebration, and no matter how you slice it, it’s bound to be good.
Creative Cakes Read the next Uppereast.com review:Murphy's Law |
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