4.5
Verified reviews from real couples
A Natural Approach To The Art of Baking
A wonderful Cake vendor! From the tasting selection and assistance with the details all the way to the beautiful display of the cake at our wedding in August 2026, the Baking Institute did a beautiful job! The cake tasted absolutely perfect and even heard from many of our guests that they enjoyed it as well!
Nina G.
5.0
We couldn’t have been happier with our wedding cake! Everything looked absolutely beautiful and tasted even better. Our cake was exactly what we envisioned, and our guests couldn’t stop talking about how delicious it was. The team was professional, easy to work with, and made the entire process stress-free from our tasting to the wedding day. Thank you for helping make our wedding so special—we would highly recommend you to anyone looking for an amazing wedding bakery!
Jacob D.
5.0
AWARD WINNER (9X)
Thanks to recommendations from couples on The Knot
Based in the North Chicagoland Area, IL, The Baking Institute is a wedding bakery producing beautiful, all-natural wedding cakes for couples on their big day. Every cake is made from fresh, raw ingredients without preservatives and artificial substitutes. The bakery is committed to providing customers with delicious and luxury standards of handmade sweet treats.
The bakery is owned and operated by passionate cake designer and pastry chef Igor Elyash. After more than two decades in the culinary industry, Igor decided to specialize in wedding cakes, connecting prospective newlyweds with unbeatable excellence. Igor prides himself on baking every cake with traditional, time-honored recipes, paying homage to the masters that came before him.
The Baking Institute can create custom wedding cakes from scratch. Couples are welcome to book a tasting session where they can sample different flavors and designs, discussing their ideas with the head pastry chef. The bakery also offers sweet treats like cookies, cupcakes, and pastry trays to complement the dessert table.
Woman-owned Business
20+ years in business
Speaks English, Russian, Spanish
Details
Cakes & Desserts
Cake Accessories
Cake Delivery & Setup
Cake Tastings
Cupcakes
Groom's Cakes
Other Desserts
Dietary Options
Dairy Free
Gluten Free
Sugar Free
Vegan
Awards and Affiliations
9-Time 'Best of Weddings'
2026.2025.2024.+6 more.
Best of Weddings
The Knot independently assesses vendors for this award—it’s never self-reported. We base it on firsthand experiences from real couples and guests, and they must have a 4.5-star average across 7+ reviews in the qualifying year.
Hall of Fame
Earned by winning 'Best of Weddings' four or more times.
Join couples who chose award-winning vendors for their wedding
Reviews
4.5
out of 5.0249 reviews
Your trust is our goal. Our community relies on honest reviews to help
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Review Summary
This AI-generated summary is a snapshot of this vendor's ratings and feedback.
The Baking Institute consistently delivered beautiful, delicious wedding cakes and sweets, praised for accurate custom designs, timely delivery, and professional, accommodating service. Tastings were easy and helpful, with many flavor options and gluten‑free choices that guests loved. Couples highly recommend them.Review photos
Showing slide number 1 out of 9
Jacob D
Highlighted review.
5.0
We couldn’t have been happier with our wedding cake! Everything looked absolutely beautiful and tasted even better. Our cake was exactly what we envisioned, and our guests couldn’t...
stop talking about how delicious it was. The team was professional, easy to work with, and made the entire process stress-free from our tasting to the wedding day. Thank you for helping make our wedding so special—we would highly recommend you to anyone looking for an amazing wedding bakery!
Nina G
5.0
A wonderful Cake vendor! From the tasting selection and assistance with the details all the way to the beautiful display of the cake at our wedding in August 2026, the Baking Insti...
tute did a beautiful job! The cake tasted absolutely perfect and even heard from many of our guests that they enjoyed it as well!
Any questions?
Kesi M
5.0
Cake was amazing it looked amazing and tasted like a slice of heaven!
Claire B
5.0
We worked with The Baking Institute after a recommendation from our venue. Our experience with selecting a cake and a design was easy. Our cake was delicious! We were so happy with...
the final outcome.
Jamie Q
5.0
The Baking Institute made our wedding cake and not only was it beautiful, it tasted amazing!! 10/10 would recommend!
Olivia Claire V
5.0
Our wedding cake was part of the venue package, so we didn't look further, but this was an absolutely delicious and beautiful cake. Working with Igor and staff was easy and accomm...
odating. We selected 3 flavors of cake and filling, and settled on a white cake with raspberry Bavarian cream filling. The "Inspo" pic was duplicated just as imagined, and we received comments and text messages even days after noting how delicious the cake was. You won't be disappointed when you see the kinds of lovely cakes this bakery puts out
Peter M
5.0
The Baking Institute was a partnered vendor with our reception hall, and honestly, we didn’t expect it to go as well as it did. Our first meeting wasn’t great, and we were unsure a...
bout moving forward. Thankfully, they allowed us to come back for a second visit—and that visit completely blew us away with their incredible customer service.
The baker took her time listening to our vision and thoughtfully sketched out a cake design that perfectly fit our theme. She also offered insightful suggestions that really helped bring our ideas to life.
On the wedding day, the cake looked absolutely beautiful and tasted even better. We chose a white cake with a French custard dulce de leche filling, and we had guests who normally dislike sweets devour their slices! We can’t wait to enjoy our anniversary layer next year.
Kelly R
5.0
We got our cake through the Baking Institute via our vendor Biagios and the process was seamless! Our marble cake with banana filling was amazing and all our guests enjoyed it!
Megan M
5.0
Worked with them for our wedding cake. I am gluten free but not many of my guest were, they suggested doing a GF topper and regular cake for the bottom two layers. They also sugges...
ted making the two types of cakes different so that the servers would have a visual distinction between GF and regular. I really appreciated them being able to accommodate my diet and also offer advice for my event. Of course the cake was beautifully decorated and absolutely delicious, our guests raved about it all night.
Jordan S
5.0
My husband and I ordered sweets from here because it was a recommended vendor through our hotel package. We worked with Omar and he was so kind and helpful. Our cake tasted delicio...
us and everyone LOVED the sweets!
Paige D
4.0
The tasting was good. We learned a lot about wedding cakes. As the weeks went on, we went back and forth on what we wanted our cake to be and what was even possible. On our wedding...
day, the cake looked great!
Emily F
5.0
Our cake tasting for our wedding went by so smoothly! They listened to our needs and all the cake/frosting flavors were delicious. They custom designed the frosting pattern to matc...
h my dress!
Brianna C
5.0
The person that guided us through our tasting and cake design was so helpful and patient! We ended up with the absolute perfect cake and it was so delicious! We chose marble cake w...
ith bavarian cream. Highly recommend!
Kellie H
5.0
Our cake was absolutely beautiful and delicious for our wedding on 10/26/24!!! We had a great experience at our tasting and designed a cake easily with the help of the designer. It...
came out exactly as we wanted and received multiple compliments on how tasty and beautiful it was! I definitely recommend The Baking Institute!
Joanna H
5.0
It was so great. The cake looked just like our picture! They suggested we do both flavors we liked because we couldn’t choose, and it was the best decision ever. The vendor came th...
rough our venue, but it was a great choice!
Kimberly C
5.0
We ended up working with the Baking Institute through our venue for the wedding, and honestly, it was wonderful! They offer gluten-free cakes, which was great for me since my siste...
r and I have celiac disease. The Baking Institute was great to work with from beginning to end. Our tasting appointment was super calm and had a bunch of different options to chose from. All of the options tasted absolutely delicious! They also had a bunch of different design options for the cakes and was able to match the colors of our wedding perfectly! The cake was delivered on time and both the wedding cake and 6in gluten-free free cake were beautiful and tasted heavenly, never dried out and was not overly sweet either. Truly perfect!
Brian E
5.0
We used the Baking Institute for our wedding cake through a special deal through our venue. The tasting was easy to set up and we were able to sample several different styles of ca...
ke, frosting, and fillings. They also worked with us to design all the beautiful details on the cake - even ensuring they had the right color purple to fit our theme colors. The cake was absolutely delicious and our guests enjoyed it.
Jennifer W
5.0
The cake was ABSOLUTELY delicious! It was decorated exactly like I wanted. One of the colors was a little off, but it wasn’t a big deal. I will recommend them to anyone I know that...
is looking for. a bakery!
Lizbeth V
5.0
We went for a cake tasting and decided to go with a marble cake with dulce de leche bavarian cream. When we saw it on our wedding day, we were in awe on how beautiful it looked. It...
was also very delicious! Yummm. I highly recommend The Baking Institute.
Cate B
5.0
The cake was delicious and looked gorgeous: it was waiting at our venue for us. They were great to work with.
Louella G
5.0
Cake was delicious and delivered on time.
Kasia M
5.0
Our venue, Concorde Banquets, uses The Baking Institute for wedding events and found out why they work with them. Our original vision was to have a cupcake wedding cake style but t...
he gentleman that we worked with was honest on options and how many we would need in order to accommodate our guests. He gave us cupcakes to taste and sliced cakes as well and because the taste of the marble cake with french cream and passion fruit filling was the winner! Our guests loved the cake taste and how light it was too versus how other cakes can be heavy to eat. I will definitely use them for future events if I need to order a cake.
Christine S
5.0
Our wedding cake was absolutely delicious. We received many compliments about how good it was and how well decorated it was. Thank you! Very easy to work with.
Tara L
5.0
Delicious wedding cake, they provided amazing flavors, and the decorations were perfect. Our wedding guests loved the cake!
Brittany S
3.0
The cake was the correct flavors and tasted good. I liked everything on the cake except for the top. The cake was included with my venue- the only thing I paid extra for was a go...
ld drip on top, and even showed pictures of exactly how I wanted it to look- Def did not look like that. Looked like they just poured caramel over the top- it looked gross. First thing I said when I walked into the reception room was "I hate the top of the cake- looked like someone threw up on it" Very disappointing
Pamela S
5.0
The best cake literally I and all my guests have ever had!! Just wow!
Jamie W
5.0
Great to work with and my goodness the cake was delicious! Everyone complimented it!! We had a tasting appointment where they provided a book to flip through to pick a design (they...
were very open to any customizations or combining of different designs!) as well as try 3 different cakes (cake, filling, and frosting type). They delivered our cake to the venue and it was beautiful and delicious!
Jennifer D
4.0
The cake we received was gorgeous and tasted delicious. Only complaints are that the cake didn't turn out exactly like our inspiration photo and the cake tasting was awful. We were...
only allowed to try 3 cake/icing flavors and they had less flavor than a grocery store cake (vanilla, chocolate, marble). Luckily someone had cancelled so we were able to try their flavors and the dulce de leche was excellent and the one we ended up choosing. Overall great execution on the cake, but I wish the tasting was a better experience.
Ariana S
5.0
Look no further! They have such a wide selection of deserts for a desert table and their cakes are incredibly delicious! Every person we worked with was so helpful and great to wor...
k with. We had a ton of food for our wedding and not a massive number of guests but, they devoured every type of desert and the cake. There was almost nothing left over. We will absolutely be using them again to cater another event.
Lauren T
5.0
An incredible experience!!! The whole tasting process was smooth and delicious. Filling out the form ahead of time was easy to make sure you tired what you wanted. I am also gluten...
free so they accommodated that as well. Our cake was absolutely amazing and all our guests loved it!
Jessica R
5.0
We used The Baking Institute in partnership with our venue for our 6/24/23 wedding. I don't even like cake, but after tasting this cake I could not stop eating it!!! I had so many ...
guests tell me this is the best cake they've ever had in their lives!
From the start, The Baking Institute was nothing but professional. They made the entire experience very fun for couples through the tasting experience. You get to fill out a form requesting 3 different types of cakes with whatever flavors you want for cake flavor, filling, and frosting. At the tasting, they even let you take home the cake you didn't finish eating. I brought in a photo for inspiration and they had no problem recreating it.
On the actual day of the wedding, the cake looked JUST like the picture and tasted absolutely incredible. I couldn't have asked for anything more from this company! If you're looking for a stress free company to help you make your wedding cake dreams come true, then look no further! You won't regret it!
(By the way, our cake was a white cake with raspberry Bavarian cream filling!)
Amanda S
5.0
Their cake is unbelievable. People were taking slices home for later. Our tasting was great and they NAILED the sugar flowers on our cake.
Nique W
5.0
They were flexible with timing to come in and taste cakes and pick out the design. They had several samples available of what could be done with the cake. They had a lot of differe...
nt cake combinations available. The cake was moist and the flavors were really good. They did a great job listening to the design we wanted but provided helpful suggestions. It came to life beautifully.
S H
5.0
We opted for a selection of desserts instead of a cake and the Baking Institute delivered superbly. Communication was seamless, the customer service team was flexible and allowed u...
s to make changes as needed, and the cost was affordable. Our guests were very happy campers and are still raving about the selections. Many thanks to the team at the Baking Institute!
Alexia T
5.0
My wedding cake was part of my package deal with my venue (Venuti's Banquets), but The Baking Institute still allowed us to come for a tasting and offered us all options, some as a...
t an additional cost of course. To my surprise, they even asked how we wanted the cake designed. I assumed I was going to be given maybe three choices, but the woman we met with took her time and asked questions about what we might want and showed us pictures along the way. My guests raved about the cake! My mother-in-law froze our cake top as some kind of tradition, but my husband and I were a little upset we didn't have the chance to enjoy more of it! I would highly recommend The Baking Institute whether it is offered in a package deal or not! They are worth it!
Monica Z
5.0
Our cake was so stunning and incredible! The cake was so delicious it was eaten completely with no leftovers, which as you know for wedding cakes, is almost unheard of! Absolutely...
delicious and so unique and we received a ton of compliments from our guests. Thank you Baking Institute!!
Becky K
5.0
Our cake was delicious and looked exactly how I imagined. Definitely recommend!
Amanda M
4.0
Our cake was included in our package--we went in for the tasting and met with the owner. He was a funny man who knew his stuff. He helped me pick out the design of my cake keeping ...
in mind, venue and even what my dress looked like! I ordered a half and half cake (half yellow and half chocolate) with an oreo mousse filled (which was an additional cost). The cake was absolutely delicious and so fresh. I didn't have an entire piece, but I did snag a bite from a random table. I was so happy it was fresh and some of the best cake I have ever had! The lemon, praline and carrot cake were other ones we tried and were also delicous!
Sara J
5.0
Delicious cake! 100/10 would order through here again, everyone loved it!
Jacquilynn R
5.0
Beautiful and delicious, just as we knew it would be! The process was very easy and streamlined thankfully 👌🏼
Karen H
5.0
We recently hired them for our wedding and the cake turned out great! The taste was super yummy and it looked beautiful
Nicole C
5.0
Absolutely amazing. We never had a worry about our cake. We did everything through Concorde Banquets. We went to the tasting & was blown away by the quality of the cake! We did not...
have one person not like the cake! It was absolutely amazing. Definitely will recommend to anyone!
Maggie M
5.0
Our wedding reception venue had a contract with TBI which is how we found them. There is an easy online form to request a tasting and consultation. The staff member who helped us s...
howed us many photos and was able to help us find the right fit. The wedding cake itself was attractive and tasted ok.
Heather A
3.0
This company has a contract with our venue. If I’m being honest the cake tasting was terrible. The cake didn’t taste good at all. But I didn’t want to pay for a cake when it was in...
the package. All that aside our cake for our wedding was really good! It was designed how we wanted it to be! I wish they included more options in the price with the venue though.
Holly M
5.0
We had this bakery as part of our wedding package, which can be a little unnerving. But there was nothing to fear!! Our cake was gorgeous and exactly what we wanted. Delicious and ...
we got so many compliments. Definitely recommend!
Gina M
5.0
The Baking Institute was apart of our package at our wedding venue, Avante Banquets. We could not have been more happy with our cake and sweets table! It was all so good and commun...
ication with setting up our tasting leading up to our day was very easy.
Joel M
5.0
Cake was perfect! Exactly what I asked for and tasted amazing! Thank you so much for making my day that much more special!
Haley V
5.0
We used Meridian Banquets who utilizes The Baking Institute for all of their bakery needs. They made our wedding cake exactly as requested. We got half chocolate cake with raspberr...
y filling and half yellow cake with dulce de leche filling. The flavor was delicious and tasted so great! The cake design turned out phenomenal and they created a gorgeous and elegant design from the picture ideas we provided them (picture ideas from their website). The cake looked like a fairy tale!
They were very accommodating for the cake tasting when we got sick unexpectedly and had to do an at home cake tasking. They made it easy to do a contactless pick up and did the entire thing over the phone with us.
They also provided a full sweets table for dessert at our wedding and our guests were raving about the taste and expansiveness of the dessert table.
I would definitely recommend The Baking Institute for any wedding!
Lydia V
5.0
We just had our wedding yesterday and the cake was incredible! It was beautiful and delicious! We ordered a bunch of bite sized sweets too, and our guests loved them all. Thank you...
!
Tiffany D
5.0
Highly recommend!!!! They were fabulous and so easy to work with. They did such an amazing job on my wedding cake and my dessert table. They have a million different options, and e...
verything they make is SO yummy!!! I also had them create Tiffany&Co theme treats for my bridal shower, and everyone thought they did such a great job! I will definitely be going back to them for all my future events.
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The Baking Institute
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The Baking Institute
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