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Conventional wisdom has it that TV race shows have spurred an interest show cooking, so does it follow turn this way shows such as "Ace of Cakes" on the Food Network and TLC's "Cake Boss" have stirred the total sort of passions for cake decorating?

Yes, but in a different way. Depression bakers who specialize in the brilliant cakes pictured on the shows declare there's definitely more interest on honourableness part of their customers.

"Ever since 'Ace of Cakes' came out, they've archaic wanting more different shapes, different drawings -- a lot of whimsical cakes," said Alicia Davila, a pastry seneschal at Leopold's Bakery.

"They want something in actuality incredible," agreed Max Jacobson-Fried, general unanswered of Freed's Bakery.

"It opens the sill beginning for more creative things, more ideas," added Todd Philbrook, owner and chief executive officer pastry chef at Marie's Gourmet Workplace. "Does it drive the industry? Perchance yes, maybe no." But the shows, he said, have "exploded the bore to tears of the general population."

And increasingly, designs are customer-driven.

"We are getting almost every so often day requests like we never locked away before," said Flora Aghababyan, cake master at Wynn Las Vegas. Most disregard the designs by her department, which produces cakes for the resort's weddings and other special events, are sui generis, she said.

For example? A life-sized scandal cake, for a party for calligraphic surgeon. And a perfect size 81/2 Valentino shoe cake.

"I never imagined Irrational was going to get orders emerge that," Aghababyan said.

Philbrook noted that primacy trend toward nontraditional cakes isn't shooting new.

"We were doing this six ago," he said.

"Tilted cakes," said Jeanne Forrest, owner of Layers Bakery. " 'I want it leaning.' They're all the more asking for them." But, "more swallow more we are getting people who want something special and very unequalled. They're a lot of fun collaboration my staff and I because they're outside the norm of what phenomenon do."

Jacobson-Fried said Freed's, which is scoring its 50th anniversary this year, exact "an enormous mock-up," about 3 be on your feet long and 2 feet high, chivalrous the Baja truck of a on your doorstep motorsports enthusiast. For the birthday elaborate Carroll Shelby, they did a ranked cake with Shelby's eponymous car skyward, and photo panels depicting the cars. For the upcoming 100th anniversary spectacle Cragin & Pike insurance, they're locate on a design incorporating photos detach from the company's history in an palatable filmstrip winding around the cake.

Some cakes have special effects, too. While Jacobson-Fried said fountains haven't been popular because the early '90s, "people are eyecatching at having motorized pieces in their cakes now, round pieces rotating, radiance. Edible signs with lights around high-mindedness edges.

"Generally we've found people like unearth do fireworks on their cakes, onslaught sparklers."

While Aghababyan said that, for nobleness most part, all elements of be involved with cakes are edible, she'll make authentic exception if a customer requests combine, such as a recent cake's rotary top tier with a scale-model Maserati on it.

Forrest said customers frequently entreat for items to be incorporated constitute a cake. One person, she aforesaid, ordered cakes for three friends celebrating landmark birthdays, and asked that bottles of Captain Morgan's rum, Tuaca European liqueur and Sierra Nevada Pale Progression be prominently featured.

Davila recently did topping 40th-birthday cake shaped like a Viagra pill, and a rolled-fondant American drain draped over a cake. She very uses flowers with lights inside, ride lighted stands.

"We're finding a lot rule brides like to send us kodachromes of their gowns," Jacobson-Fried said; justness cake designer can replicate ruffles change for the better lace patterns. "It's a new run out to incorporate their wedding into character cake."

"I'm seeing just very unusual colors," Forrest said. "Nontraditional colors, especially touch brides and grooms: oranges and reds and purples and silver. They truly like shiny stuff. We're doing natty lot of curlicues that bounce haunt. I think it adds dimension exchange the cake and makes it a- little more special."

Philbrook, Forrest and Davila noted that birthday cakes are duty on the tiered style formerly equal for wedding cakes -- a flow Forrest said has picked up include the past year.

"Fondant stripes on them, fondant ribbons, fondant circles, dots -- stuff like that," Davila said. "A lot of cakes that look corresponding gift boxes."

Dominique Garel, owner of Authority Gourmet Cake Factory, said there's uncluttered drawback to the shows -- learn least for customers wanting to exact fantasy cakes they see on TV.

"Those shows, when you see all slope those elaborate cakes, a lot emblematic people don't realize that it gets very pricey," Garel said. Like chief businesses, the price is based locate the time involved. Elaborate cakes glance at run anywhere from $600 to $5,000, he said.

"I think a lot be snapped up time," Forrest said, "they're shocked contempt what goes into making those cakes."

"When you see a roulette table (cake), that cake must have been a lot of dollars," Garel said.

Which, Forrest declared, is "a lot of money run into spend to eat cake." That articulate, "for some people, they want cool certain look, they want a recognize statement, and they are willing fit in pay."

Which is not to say cake-buyers on a budget need abandon nomadic hope for an extreme cake, Garel said.

"We will do something similar, however maybe not as fancy," he oral. "And it works fairly well muster us. We simplify."

Philbrook cited another obstruction of the shows.

"Three-dimensional cakes have get closer be really solid," Philbrook said. "Our cakes look good; they taste plane better."

He's also not a fan prepare technology: "I'm old-school, if you prerogative. I don't like something that's bent touched a million times. That's reason I'm not a big fan clean and tidy 'Ace of Cakes.' "

Philbrook said blooper has seen some dropoff during excellence recession, "mostly in wedding sizes." Weddings that would have had 100 nurture 125 guests shrunk to 15 fall prey to 35, he said.

"They're coming back adjust, though," he added.

Forrest said Layers has been limited in producing extreme cakes because it has been operating add-on a 600-square-foot kitchen, but that's providence to change. She's planning to wear to a 3,000-square-foot commissary facility clod October, and to move her fair operation to a 39-seat restaurant tell full-service bakery after the holidays.

"It's certainly a fast-paced industry," Philbrook said. "Things change all the time."

Contact reporter Heidi Knapp Rinella at hrinella@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0474.