By Katherine Parente, Intern for the Levittown History Collection
Programming is a vital part of a public library. They have the ability to bring members of the community together to learn or improve important skills, socialize, and enjoy activities in a shared space for free. Most importantly, their accessibility ensures that all members of the community are able to participate. Levittown Public Library has always seen the value in programming, which is represented in its history. In the library’s early years, a strong emphasis was placed on programs, and many of those programs are documented with photographs in the Publicity Photographs Collection, which can be found in the Levittown History Collection.¹ These included a variety of programs for all ages, including children’s story times, arts and crafts, design, and gardening activities.
One such program took place in 1979, which was a baking demonstration and workshop. The instructor was a local baker and cake decorator from Brooklyn named Sylvia Weinstock. She and many enthusiastic participants created desserts such as cakes, pies, and pastries, which were captured in photographs for the History Collection. Years later, Weinstock would become a widely successful baker and decorator, creating extravagant wedding cakes for high-profile celebrities, lavish events around the world, and guest judging on reality competition TV shows such as Food Network’s Chopped and Netflix’s Nailed It!
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| Levittown Public Library. (1978). Pastry Demo: Sylvia Weinstock Instructing Workshop [Photograph]. Levittown Public Library Publicity Photographs Collection. (LHC.LPP.1020, LPP.015). Levittown History Collection, Levittown Public Library, Levittown, NY.LHC.LPP.1020_LPP.012 |
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| Levittown Public Library. (1978). Pastry Demo: Sylvia Weinstock Instructing Workshop, Assisting Participants [Photograph]. Levittown Public Library Publicity Photographs Collection. (LHC.LPP.1020, LPP.015). Levittown History Collection, Levittown Public Library, Levittown, NY. |
Weinstock began her career as an elementary school teacher on Long Island, having completed her bachelor’s degree at Hunter College and a master’s degree in education at Queens College. It wasn’t until 1980, at the age of 50, that she began baking professionally from her own store in Manhattan, Sylvia Weinstock Cakes, founded by Weinstock and her husband, Ben. She had practiced the art during her family’s ski trips to Hunter Mountain in Upstate New York.² The business started out small, with cakes ordered and purchased by appointment. However, demand quickly grew within the next few years, when she was commissioned by top hotels in the city and by the elite. Over the years, word spread even further, and throughout her career Weinstock’s impressive clientele included celebrities such as Whitney Houston, Oprah Winfrey, Robert De Niro, and Bill Gates, and political figures like the Kennedys and Clintons.³
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Creator: Manny Hernandez | Credit: Getty Images Copyright: 2014 Getty Images |
How did Weinstock’s business become highly successful so quickly? Her cake decorating was considered transformative in the industry. Traditionally, wedding cakes were small and simple with little decoration. Weinstock transformed the way these desserts were decorated by creating extravagant floral designs and multiple layers. To create perfect replicas, she deconstructed real roses and studied each petal, sculpting her sugar dough flowers until they were just right. Another staple of her cakes was that she only used buttercream icing, which takes more time to smoothen, but refused to take the “easier” route with fondant. She once told The New York Times, “I hate fondant. It’s cheap and easy.”⁴
Later in her career, she appeared as a guest judge on several reality competition baking shows. She appeared in Season 1, Episode 9 of Top Chef: Just Desserts in 2010, Season 1, Episode 1 of Nailed It! in 2018, and Season 43, Episode 11 of Chopped: Sweets in 2019.
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Sylvia Weinstock and fellow judge Jacques Torres advising a contestant on Nailed It! Creator: Greg Gayne / Netflix Copyright: 2018 Netflix |
She remained highly successful in her career until her death in 2021 at the age of 91. Her work pioneered an entire culinary industry, influencing the luxury art around the world and for future generations of bakers and artists. She is appropriately dubbed the “da Vinci of Wedding Cakes” and “Queen of Cakes” by the media and peers in the industry.⁵
Sylvia Weinstock’s remarkable career serves as a reminder that the impact of a public library’s programming can extend far beyond the event. What began as a simple, local workshop in 1979 now stands as part of Levittown Public Library’s history, preserved as physical, and newly digital, photographs in its collection. Her story shows how community programs can bring people together to create, learn, and form lasting connections, and perhaps become a stepping stone to unexpected opportunities.