Outrageous Elegance
Jason Schreiber knows cake—and art. His studies as an art history major at Vassar provided an understanding of composition, form, color, and structure. A stint in the pastry school at the French Culinary Institute in Manhattan filled in the blanks for a role that is even more difficult than one might imagine.
“Wedding cakes are a real structural piece of work. They don’t just stay up by their own graces,” Schreiber says, by way of example. “They have to survive transportation, then sit there for five hours and still look great.”
Schreiber brings elegance to cake making—an art form he perfected while working for Ron Ben-Israel’s noted couture cake studio in New York. The master pastry instructor and Food Network host of the competition series Sweet Genius helped Schreiber elevate his natural ability, as he rose up the ladder from intern to production manager to confectionary designer.
Under Ben-Israel’s tutelage, Schreiber had the opportunity to create cakes that ranged from the fantastical, like an Alice in Wonderland cake that took his team a week to complete, to awe inspiring, such as a life-sized drum kit cake for a bar mitzvah.
He also helped design and create a circus cake for Britney Spears’s 27th birthday bash. The cake featured elements of big-top shows: a circus ring, an elephant stand, the ball a bear might dance on, a giant top hat, and a mobile of aerial acrobats. It took a team of 10 to get it on the road to her celeb-studded party.
While working for Ben-Israel, Schreiber’s cakes also appeared in O, the Oprah Magazine for its 10th anniversary issue, in the Knot, and a Swarovski crystal-bedecked wed-ding cake in the film Sex and the City 2. All of which prepared Schreiber to take his next step—going out on his own as a freelance food artist and stylist. He made the leap last fall and has landed assignments with major clients. For Martha Stewart Weddings magazine, Schreiber was commissioned to create a marbled cake with Brooklyn designer and chocolatier Mary Matson. The four-tiered cake, made with fondant and marbled chocolate panels, was chosen as the cover for the spring 2013 issue.
“It was a huge honor to have my cake featured on the cover. From what I understand, it’s extremely rare for them to use a cake as the cover photo,” he says.
His résumé also includes “teacher” these days. The confectionary artist recently branched out, through Craftcast, to teach online classes on creating the kind of exquisitely lifelike sugar flowers that often adorn his cakes. It’s a task challenging for even the most skilled and experienced cake artists.
But Schreiber says that’s all part of the fun. “I love cooking, and especially baking,” he says, “so having the opportunity to do that every day is wonderful.”
Stacey Norwood is a confirmed kitchenista, wordsmith, and domestic hedonist, based in Nashville, Tennessee. For more information on Schreiber, visit jasonschreiber.com.