Bal Harbour

he f irst request arrived t wo years a go. A bir thday g irl wanted a classic cake with a Marie Antoinette vibe. Upon reviewing the reference images, Angélica M. Lenox, the founder of Sweet Guilt dessert atelier, did a double take. She hadn't seen one of those cakes in real life since the 1970s. Since then, orders for "vintage" cakes with intricate hand piping have only gotten more popular. Now, Lenox and her team make three of these cakes per week. One couple—planning a big-bud- get wedding—asked for an exact replica of Elvis and Priscilla Presley's five-tier cake supported by plastic columns. "This fad is coming, and I think it's going to stay for a little bit," Lenox says. But v int a ge ca ke lovers, t a ke note: t he decorat ion technique requires a specialist. Producing a vintage-style cake is a multi-step process: once the cake is baked and filled, it is covered with icing and left to set. Then, a skilled decorator pipes the entire cake by hand. Over the last 20 years, many bakers have turned to silicone molds to expedite the decorating process for fondant cakes, but vintage cakes require " tremendous skill with buttercream," Lenox explains. "You have to have the dexterity to be able to pipe very intricate flowers, petals, movement, curtains, connections, little stars, that go far and beyond the basics of piping buttercream." In order to learn Italian or Swiss piping, one must attend culinary school and specialize in pastry. "Within pastry, there's something called piping techniques," Lenox says, which "can take over a year to learn." Now, with YouTube and TikTok, home decorators are learning tricks, but an online tutorial can't replace hundreds of hours practicing with a T seasoned artisan in the room. For example, the Lambeth Piping Style—a popular British cake s t yle f rom t he 19 3 0 s — cre at e s dept h by "over-piping " severa l layers of roya l icing. "Finding capable bakers and decorators is ex- tremely hard," says Lenox, who learned this firsthand while expanding her team between November 2020 and March 2021. "Finding tal- ented decorators and skillful bakers was one of the hardest par ts of g rowing," she explains. It took several inter views before she found someone who knew how to do Italian or Swiss piping or macrame, which is doing macrame with sugar—skills bakers in their 20s and 30s rarely learn anymore. Today, eight years into her dessert atelier, Lenox has one team that fills the cakes and another that decorates. She designs mock-ups herself after inter viewing couples, spending time with their wedding mood board, and checking out their floral plans. Her approach to custom cakes goes back to her own wedding, when she and her now-husband couldn't find a bakery to design a cake with their recipe. Her family is Puerto Rican and European, while her husband's family is American, and the families had dišerent preferences on sweetness and cake tex- ture. "I couldn't find a place when I got married that was able to custom- ize the cake for us. It was their recipe, take it or leave it." Thou gh today 's couples a re embraci n g t he v i nt a ge aes t het ic , they're filling the cakes with modern flavors. The last time these cakes were au courant, flavors were often limited to vanilla, almond, or, say, coconut. Today, couples are filling the cakes with modern flavors like vanilla honey salt, which, as Lenox describes, is "a Madagascar vanilla base cake filled with honey, and honey but ter cream, and sprink led with sea salt." Even as our cult ure becomes more deeply reliant on automated technolog y, there is no replacing the artistry that goes into Italian or Swiss piping. "I don't think there's a machine that does this," says Lenox. "This is old school." THERE'S A NEW DEMAND FOR A TIME-HONORED TECHNIQUE IN THE PASTRY WORLD. VINTAGE CAKE MAKING IS HAVING A COMEBACK. WE VISIT ONE DESSERT ATELIER TO GET A TASTE FOR THE CRAFT. BY KATE DWYER COUTURE Confections A cascade of cherry blossom-inspired sugar flowers adorn this buttercream cake by Sweet Guilt dessert atelier. P H OTO CO U R T E S Y O F S W E E T G U I LT 150 BAL HARBOUR

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