With the glut of baking books and Instagram images of jaw-dropping cake designs, it can’t be easy to get a major publishing house to sign a deal for yet another cake-decorating book. Yet Tel Aviv’s Georgia Green has managed to do just that.

In July, Georgia’s Cakes: A Step-By-Step Masterclass to Make Every Cake a Showstopper will be published by Pavilion Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Green joins high-profile authors on their roster, including Italian chef/TV personality Gennaro Contaldo and Ben Lebus, founder of the online culinary sensation, MOB Kitchen.

Green’s publishing coup was surely helped along by having British celebs as clients, a YouTube channel, Georgia’s Cakes, with millions of views and 250,000 Instagram followers.

Green, 31, credits the fact that her upcoming book is not just another tome filled with multiple recipes.

“I knew the baking book market is saturated and no one needs another 101 recipes. I wanted to create a book with easy but detailed instructions so that not only the more experienced decorators, but also beginners can create showstopping cakes at home,” she tells ISRAEL21c.

For example, do you know that you need to weigh eggs for use in cakes to make sure they are 60 grams (2 oz.) each?   

Joy of baking

Green, who moved to Israel in 2020, grew up in an artistic family in North London. Her mother is a graphic artist and her father, an architect.

Although talented, she never quite knew where her creative passion lay and after being accepted to study architecture at Cambridge decided to choose animation studies instead.

“It’s just amazing how a collection of random strokes with a palette knife can create something so beautiful!”

Not convinced she was on the right career path, Greene decided to take a break after a year and do a diploma in patisserie at Le Cordon Bleu.

“I have always found joy in cooking and baking especially, as it’s fun, pretty and artistic. I realized for the first time I was doing what I love,” she says.

Her next move was to take a job at a small bakery in central London. Soon she became known to the regular clientele as the “cake girl.”

People began ordering her artistic cakes privately as “word spread amongst family, friends and local customers.”

The big break

The turning point came in 2014, when Green received an order to make a bespoke cake for the model/actress Cara Delevingne, who was at the time presenting DKNY at London Fashion Week.

Green tagged a photo on Instagram of herself, the model and the impressive cake that replicated in edible form a piece from the show – a green and yellow bomber jacket replete with silver zipper.

Within an afternoon, the Georgia’s Cakes account grew from 400 to 6,000 followers.    Green’s artistry also caught the attention of online food and travel network Tastemade, which commissioned videos. Then she started uploading instructional videos to her own YouTube channel. The first clip was a drip cake demonstration that has three million views.   

A move

By 2020 Green, who had always considered Israel her second home, decided to move here permanently.

The pandemic struck soon afterwards, but she was undeterred.

“People were actually looking how to occupy themselves during lockdown and suddenly my instructional YouTubes were being viewed all across the world while I was staying over on my friend’s sofa in Tel Aviv.”

In August 2020, Green opened a space where she could hold cake-decorating and baking workshops. She and a partner, Lee’at Gentely, operated Baker Street, just off Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Street, for nearly three years.   

During this time she also took part in a webinar with ISRAEL21c, and during the Covid lockdown she and Gentely recorded a series of videos with ISRAEL21c on how to make cakes, including a Rainbow cake, a chocolate-tahini cake, a gluten-free chocolate-orange cake, and a donut cake.

Master cake decorator

Green describes her style as being freeform. She loves playing with textures of buttercream. “It’s just amazing how a collection of random strokes with a palette knife can create something so beautiful!”

Special touches she adds to her creations (all featured in the book) are made from scratch and fully edible.

These include rice paper that was used to create a mock veil draped over a wedding cake, gold leaf, chocolate ruffles, macaroons in the shape of shells and salted caramel popcorn.

A popular specialty of Green’s is using a cartoon drawing technique on cupcakes and even multitiered cakes which make use of her animation experience.

Green says the secret to success is in technique. When it comes to buttercream, for example, “you have to put the right amount of pressure when applying, use the right equipment and get the right angle. It’s a matter of practice, practice, practice.”

The master cake decorator insists on using eggs, butter and caster sugar in her recipes even if this won’t go down well with vegans and low-carb adherents.

“It is food, after all. It has to taste good and be eaten, not just photographed,” she says with a smile.

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