This cake put me in mind of Rene Magritte’s famous painting entitled The Treason of Images.

Beneath a picture of a pipe is written, this is not a pipe. Rather, you are to understand, it is a painting of a pipe. Similarly, this cake is not a flower. It is an interpretation of a photograph of a flower. Confused?

This was actually a very unusual assignment. It was my honour to make a cake to celebrate the opening of a photography exhibit at AACI in Talpiot recently. The very talented Riki Metz unveiled her absolutely breathtaking floral photography to some very lucky Jerusalemites. Did you miss it? Don’t worry, the exhibit will be around until November 28, so there’s still plenty of time to catch it.

One of the most fascinating elements of the photography is that it is not entirely literal. You’ll never see flowers the same way again. Shot up close or presented in mirror image or kaleidoscope fashion, the petals simply leap out of the frame.

The flower featured in the ad for the show was the model for the cake.

In this instance Riki actually preferred a completely literal rendering of the photograph, if not of the flower itself. I didn’t even get to see what the entire flower looked like, just the two angles she focused on with her lens. It was a very interesting experience to have my view curtailed in that way, to be so completely limited in how to interpret an object. I have no idea if the cake bore any resemblance to the original flower, and it didn’t actually matter.

On the night, the art hung on the walls completely eclipsed the cake. And that’s exactly as it should be.