These tasty cake creations are the work of baker Miriam Milord, a Germany-born artist who creates her unusual sweetmeats in her adopted New York neighbourhood of Brooklyn. And pretty much anything goes.
“We once baked a cake in the shape of a backside for a party,” recalls the 35-year-old. As she stood with the cake at the airport, on her way to personally deliver it to a client in Los Angeles.
It’s not the only strange thing she’s taken with her on a plane to bring to a client: She also once took 50 kilograms of buttercream.
From a life-sized sofa to a roadkill armadillo, her BCakeNY store has created the wackiest custom-made items throughout the past decade.
“Sometimes I dissuade customers from an idea, for example a red velvet cake in the shape of a baby. If you cut it, it looks like a massacre on the table,” Milord says.
And she draws a line at certain requests, like gun-shaped cakes.
Her cakes cost anywhere from $75 to a whopping $7,500 for very time-consuming and particularly unusual pieces.
Milord also sells cupcakes for 2 dollars and other low-price items, since unconventional orders alone won’t sustain the growing business.
“Some people think we can bake a cake and then live off it, but there is a lot of work behind it,” Milord stresses.
Even Hollywood has taken notice of her unusual pieces. Milord has baked a Ferrari for Justin Bieber, a giant lipstick for Rihanna, a five-storey-tall homage to Jay-Z, and a raccoon for Kevin Hart.
“Celebrities are always looking for the newest, craziest things that will make their Instagram explode. That’s how it all started with social media,” says the entrepreneur who set up her company in 2008.
After moving from Germany to study graphic design in Connecticut, Milord moved to New York in 2000. “After graduation, I actually wanted to move back to Dusseldorf, but then I fell in love with New York,” she says. “The city sucks you in and then you can’t get away.”
Her cake company was created by chance, while she was planning a friend’s baby shower. Milord could not afford a cake and decided to bake it herself, finding some inspiration on YouTube.
The cake found an enthusiastic audience, and soon she was getting a few orders each week from friends and acquaintances. She baked cakes at night for a few months before quitting her job at an art gallery and taking the plunge as a full-time entrepreneur.
One of her first and most famous customers was Kourtney Kardashian, sister of TV star Kim Kardashian. The It girl ordered a sky-blue train for her baby shower in 2009. “The cake was absolutely stunning, and guests were thrilled when they saw it,” the Kardashian clan gushed on Milord’s website. “The cake not only tasted delicious, it also took the breath away from anyone who saw it.”
Today, Milord runs a company with 18 employees. The team produces 20 to 35 cakes a week, but even they are not immune to production disasters: “A colleague carrying a cake once fell down the stairs, and one cake completely melted away on a yacht in the heat.”
Social media has been a particular boon for attracting customers: BCakeNY has more than a quarter of a million followers on Instagram.
But despite the success of the business so far, it’s still much more about hard graft and pressure than hobnobbing with the stars.
And while she has to be all smiles and grace for her star-studded clientele, Milord freely admits: “Sometimes I wake up at 3 in the morning and think ‘Oh God, how am I going to manage everything?’” – DPA
BAKER: Miriam Milord poses with one of her custom-made creations, a cake based on the film Cars, at her bakery in New York.
