Vintage cakes — the art of returning to past decades

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Three years ago, if I got an order for "cream ruffles, piped roses, fondant ribbons, pastel colours," the client usually belonged to a certain age. A grandmother, or a traditional wedding. Today the same order arrives from a twenty-year-old, via Pinterest, in Shiraz or Tehran or Berlin. The vintage cake is back. And it has come back with force.

This note is the story of that trend — where it came from, why it is here now, and why for me it is one of the most beautiful possible forms of cake.

From the 1950s to Instagram

The vintage cake we see today is visually rooted in the 1950s and 60s — when American and British confectioners, with piping tools, tiny ruffles and cream roses, set the dream of a "complete" cake onto the table. Beautiful but exaggerated — like the fluffy dresses of that era.

For decades that form fell out of fashion. Minimalism came. Smooth fondant came. Plain airbrush came. Until a few years ago, a handful of young confectioners on Pinterest started building "vintage with a wink" — the same form, but with strange colours, with cheeky messages, on tiny single-serve cakes. And suddenly, vintage was young again.

"Vintage comes back because the generation raised on minimal cakes now misses fullness. Something that looks like a lot — yet still has taste."

What makes a cake vintage

For me, four elements turn a cake into vintage: 1) Tiny cream ruffles piped with a 124-tip, the way our grandmothers piped them. 2) Fondant ribbons, real or sugar, several side by side. 3) Unsaturated colours — dusty pink, cream, deep burgundy, or a classic red. 4) A short message on top, in a script that looks like the handwriting of an old greeting card.

In the Homeyda collection you can see several examples: the burgundy Yalda cake with fondant ribbons. The strawberry cake under candlelight. The all-white cream cake with ruffles. All three, each in its own way, are interpretations of vintage.

For which occasions?

Vintage works beautifully for "close" occasions — wedding anniversaries, the birthday of someone very dear, an engagement dinner. Not because it doesn't fit larger celebrations, but because vintage is so personal it sits best on a table around which only a few people gather.

For larger events, we can scale vintage up to a multi-tier. Homeyda also makes vintage wedding cakes — same ruffles, same ribbons, but sized for 50 guests. These usually take a three-month booking window.

A suggestion if you're new to vintage

Your first vintage cake shouldn't be large. Start with a vintage bento — the same ruffles, but in a small box, for two. The order is easier, and if the flavour doesn't match your taste, the loss is small. But chances are it will match — and that's just the start of a sweet story.

And if we build a vintage bento for you, please personalise the message on top. Vintage without a personal line is only half of itself.