PRETTY SWEET: Painted Wedding Cakes by Maggie Austin

Cakes by Maggie Austin // http://www.maggieaustincake.com/

While I love a gaudily foiled or filigreed confection as much as the next girl, there's something so sweetly simple about a painted cake. The cake as canvas strikes me as a genius idea, a perfect little cube of otherwise blank space on which to throw a splashy floral or interesting vintage print.

When I sat down to gush about my new love of painted gateaux, I quickly found that there's a clear leader in this pack: Maggie Austin, an innovative cake couturier from the DC area.

While Maggie's works range from the sculptural to the linear, it is her simply shaped, luxuriously painted cakes that steal my little heart (not too suprising, I suppose, in a girl who prefers impressionists to cubists).

I'll just get out of the way to let you feast your eyes on these pretty little things.

--Rebecca