Cake Mag

Review

Rating: 8

This is the book that has split the community of cake decorators right down the middle, from stem to stern. Half of us think that Sullivan’s craft, while passionate and inspiring, shows signs of sloppy, careless finish, while the other half holds her up as the exemplar of a new kind of fun styling that hasn’t been seen in decades. I decided to make up my mind by ordering two copies of her book, one to give to my mother, one to keep for myself. We challenged each other to find the best and worst recipes and tips in Sullivan’s opus.

Yes, the color photography is sometimes garish, nothing like the elegant Cecil Beaton-inspired photographs that sparkle and illuminate the “cakebooks” of her close contemporary Lindy Smith, whose brittle, icy designs have given her the reputation of a modern-day Klimt in frosting. And yet Smith could never have completed, nor even conceived of, some of Sullivan’s neo-expressionistic “portrait cakes,” such as the one of Elvis which is wiggy enough to have been featured permanently at Graceland, maybe sunk in intaglio form right into Elvis’ tombstone. One responds to the sheer frivolity and nuttiness and yes, the love that Sullivan exudes from every pore of her body. Even her somewhat portentous crush on fondant shows us that, deep underneath her smooth surface, great feelings roil up within.

Her tips are always helpful, and most of the recipes are rather good, very rich of course, but you don’t spread gold dust over cream cheese filling and expect a low calorie plate. This is cake, after all, and it’s supposed to be bad for you! These cakes might have decorated the Technicolor visions of Maria Montez and Jon Hall in their Universal classics of the 1940s such as COBRA WOMAN and GYPSY WILDCAT. My mother and I both agreed that there are no bad recipes, just bad critics.

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States)