This NYC cake master is so more than what she went viral for

Earlier this month, celebrity gossip TikTok got up in arms when an independent NYC-based cake maker called out Kylie Jenner for wasting her time. Essentially, Amy Yip says Jenner commissioned her to create a custom cake for a perfume launch, just for the celebrity to pull out after months of planning. What’s worse is that she told Yip that she didn’t have the budget to pay for the cake and never put down a deposit, the story goes. Jenner ended up posting a picture with a cake that vaguely resembled Yip’s creations and the Internet was pretty confused about why a billionaire wasn’t able to afford a cake, of all things.

Since the viral TikToks two weeks ago—which, by the way, were made by creators that Yip doesn’t personally know—the cake maker has gotten more than 14k new followers on social media and several more orders. Yip, who used to keep all her orders in a tiny Muji notebook, is still figuring out how to keep up. 

RECOMMENDED: NYC's 30 best bakeries

It turns out that Kylie Jenner did reach out to apologize and was graceful with her response, Yip tells Time Out New York. Yip, though, would rather the focus shift from the short-lived spat to her cakes and all the work that she puts into them. She’s worried, too, that people think that she aired out her frustrations to get attention. She was just venting on the Internet, she says. “I honestly didn’t expect it to blow up as much as it did,” she tells us. 

What she doesn’t regret, though, is saying something about how frustrated she and other creative people feel that their work is constantly undervalued and what’s worse, a lot of them feel like they’re not allowed to say how they feel for fear of repercussions. “People don’t speak about things like this because they don’t want to lose a chance to work with these people or other clients,” Yip says.

You just have to take a brief look at Yip Studio’s Instagram to see that Yip’s cakes are total works of art. Some of them defy the logic of cake and look like marble or a mossy rock from a fantastical fairy universe. Yip elevates cakes to a place most of us aren’t used to seeing them—and it makes sense, considering she studied fine arts, fashion and textile design before working as a print designer for six years.

The cake-making process involves many parts, she says. For one, the cake that Kylie wanted was for 100 people, so she had to plan the design, the structure of the cake and the logistics of a delivery to the other side of the country. Considering that it was for a perfume launch, Yip says she wanted to incorporate some element of scent, which would have taken a whole other level of planning.

“It’s mostly just me—I do every part of this business,” she says. “It’s so much physical, emotional and mental labor that goes into it because I’m not this full bakery with a full staff producing everything.”

Fortunately, she’s starting to figure out how to scale up because she recognizes that her current model is not sustainable for much longer, she adds.

“For me personally, I don’t show a lot of my process because I want to make it seem kind of magical,” she says.

Her cakes start at around $375 for smaller creations, according to her website, and go up from there. That obviously comes with its pitfalls because people don’t necessarily understand how complicated the process is, which makes it easier to devalue her work, she says. She points out that people just accept that there are pants you can buy for $10 and pants you can buy for $1000, but for some reason a lot of people don’t think cakes should ever be expensive. “What I do is very polarizing,” she says.

If you want to order one of Yip’s cakes, you can get a quote on the bakery’s website and fill out this inquiry form to tell Yip what kind of cake you want.