FOOD : It Actually Tastes as Good as It Looks

THOUGH SHE’S never advertised, Joyce Maynor is no longer a well-kept secret in Southern California. Maynor, owner of Fantasy Frostings, is the wedding-cake baker of choice for some of L.A.’s finest weddings. Ask the top florists and caterers in town, and many will tell you that Fantasy Frostings is the only place to go for a really special wedding cake--one that tastes as good as it looks.

Maynor does bake the occasional special-event cake--including a birthday cake for Diana Ross and an anniversary cake for Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme--but she is best known for the wedding cakes that emerge from her tiny storefront bakery in Whittier. For 20 years, Maynor has been quietly whipping up wedding cakes--recently for such stars as Dennis Hopper (a chocolate-fudge cake with chocolate cream ganache and a filling of crushed toffee, chocolate mousse and hand-beaten fudge); Van Halen and Valerie Bertinelli (a combination white- and dark-chocolate creation), and Johnny Carson (Barbara Walters ordered Johnny a white-chocolate cake with fresh raspberries and whipped cream).

These culinary masterpieces often take up to 50 hours of labor in flower work alone. And Maynor bakes and delivers all cakes herself. The average Fantasy Frostings wedding cake costs from $600 to $1,000, but Maynor has turned out nuptial works of art that run as much as $3,000. Still, the demand is so high, she says, that she must turn down four times the number of requests that she accepts. If you’re lucky enough ever to taste her silver-white cake with a white-chocolate-mousse filling and shaved dark chocolate and Grand Marnier alternating with fresh raspberries and whipped cream, you’ll understand.

Fantasy Frostings cakes are available by appointment only, (213) 941-6266.