Sweet and smart: Cake Zine reframes dessert as a topic worthy of intellectual discussion

Cake Zine might sound sweet and playful – and it is – but don’t be fooled. This indie zine series is deeply serious too, about storytelling as much as baking. Co-founded by pastry chef Tanya Bush and editor Aliza Abarbanel, formerly of Bon Appétit, the idea emerged while organising a bake sale fighting food insecurity. “As we folded hundreds of boxes, we began discussing a more dynamic, interdisciplinary approach to a food publication – one that imaginatively expanded upon niche themes, starting with cake,” Aliza says say. The duo wanted to re-frame the topic of dessert as an “artistic, cultural, historical and intellectual space”. Their first collaboration launched in 2022 as a set of twin issues: Sexy Cake and Wicked Cake.

Three years on, Cake Zine has grown into a cult hit. It’s published six issues – including Tough Cookie, Candy Land, and the most recent release, Daily Bread – and is now available globally via 100 stockists. The team has hosted sold-out events in New York, LA, Philadelphia, London, and Paris, and published writers have been nominated for prestigious awards. Most recently, the Cake Zine team was listed in 2024’s Dazed 100.

The visual direction is led by art director Noah Emrich. Each issue is specially designed to match its theme: Tough Cookie nods to chocolate chips and kraft paper bags; Candy Land channels cotton candy with foil in pastel blue and pink, and a typeface inspired by saloon signs. The latest, Daily Bread, mimics a church hymnal, with pebbled faux leather and gold foil lettering. Inside, the issue explores the rituals, cravings, and cultural weight of bread across time and place — from communion wafers to club sandwiches. Featuring essays, poems, and artworks, it examines bread’s symbolism through themes of religion, labour, survival, and indulgence.

Almost every image is commissioned, and Cake Zine pretty much exclusively works with artists found through an extensive open-call pitching process. Many are emerging or unpublished, and in six issues they have only repeated an illustrator once. “The art inside each issue is quite diverse and doesn’t follow an overarching aesthetic throughline. We find this approach helps us to leave some of our own stylistic taste at the door, and opens us up to a broad range of work that we might have otherwise overlooked.”

Every article is deeply researched, often employing unconventional storytelling techniques and offbeat interpretations of the theme. “Despite the name, we consider ourselves a literary magazine,” they say. “We take our editorial process seriously – every piece goes through multiple rounds of revisions and we prioritise publishing a mix of voices: professional food writers alongside chefs, award-winning novelists next to first-time contributors.”

As for the name? “Cake Zine came from our very early days of ideation, before we fully understood the scale or interest in what we were building, but as an independent publication, we still identify with the DIY spirit and unconventionality that ‘zine’ represents. Plus, it’s fun to say.” With issue seven – Forbidden Fruit – already underway, Cake Zine continues to show what a food publication can be: experimental, intellectual, and playful all at once.