Sylvia Silver was born in the Bronx on January 28, 1930 and grew up in Brooklyn, where her father Samuel Silver and mother Anna (Benblatt) Silver owned a bakery and later a liquor store. The family lived above the bakery, an arrangement that suited Sylvia, who later lived above her own cake shop.
When she was 17, she was out with friends at Rockaway Beach on July 4th when she went up to a group of young men and asked if any of them would go swimming with her. Benjamin Weinstock, a student at Queens College, stepped forward.
They married in 1949 and later moved to Massapequa, Long Island, where she taught elementary school and he practiced as a lawyer while they raised three daughters.
Ms. Weinstock earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Hunter College in 1951 and a master’s degree in education from Queens College in 1973.
The family built a country house near Hunter Mountain, north of Manhattan, in the early 1970s. While her husband and children were skiing all day, Ms. Weinstock began to bake desserts. Famous Manhattan chefs had second homes in the area, and she met a few of them, including George Keller, the former pastry chef at La Caravelle; he ran a guest house nearby and took her on as his apprentice.
Another friend, William Greenberg, who owned several Manhattan bakeries that bore his name, suggested that she decorate wedding cakes with flowers. She did, and he started referring customers in need of wedding cakes that he didn’t bake.
