Clever Cakes

A roast turkey can turn any normal dinner into a festive get-together. But what happens if you cut into that turkey and find it's actually vanilla cake covered in chocolate fondant?

Handbag, confection, or work of art? All of the above.

Strauss is the queen of creating confections that are as amazing to look at as they are to taste.

Either your bird was force fed devil's food cake, or you have a cake that was created by Elisa Strauss, founder of Confetti Cakes. Either way, the meal will be the stuff of dinner party legend.

Strauss, 29, is the queen of creating confections that are as amazing to look at as they are to taste. Her cakes don't just punctuate a meal, they become an evening's focal point.

Think party cakes are fungible? Think again. Last year, Strauss fashioned a cake to look like a gift box for Kimora Lee Simmons's surprise birthday party, complete with edible diamonds.
For children, she's created cake look-alikes of favorite stuffed animals; for weddings, she's made everything from a sandbox cake for a summer wedding (complete with a tiny, edible pail and lobster) to a miniature copy of a bride's dress to a red velvet cake decorated with exact 3-D replicas of a couple's cats.

Strauss attended pastry school at the Institute of Culinary Education. But amazingly, she's taught herself much of what she knows. A few years ago, she was working as a textile designer for Ralph Lauren when she started reading cake decorating books, such as Cakes by Design. Inspired, she began experimenting with some of the techniques in the books, and one of her cakes caught the eye of Ralph Lauren himself. Lauren commissioned her to make a birthday cake in the shape of his favorite car, a Bugatti.

She's hardly left the kitchen since.

Strauss believes that anyone with a little imagination (and some rolled fondant and gum paste) can make a cake that will never be forgotten. She regularly teaches classes on creative baking out of her New York kitchen. Amateur bakers located elsewhere can attend classes around the country hosted by the International Cake Exploration Societé, or they can head to a 4-day Cake Camp in Las Vegas in September.

The best part of these crazy schools? You get to eat your homework.

Posted on June 12, 2006