Chef Benny Rivera started his cake career in Puerto Rico as a young teenager and the occasional hobby turned into a true passion when he discovered his natural talent.

When Chef Rivera relocated to New York City in 1996, his career path was focused on foreign market financial research. However, he craved a change for many years.   In an attempt to explore his past interest of cake decorating, he began taking culinary courses to learn the latest techniques in creating elaborate, sophisticated and unique cake designs.  Trained through courses from the French Culinary Institute and The Institute of Culinary Education, Chef Rivera uses the most advanced techniques to bring a remarkably clean element to modern cake design.  Chef Benny not only specializes in three dimensional sculpted cakes but also pumpkin carving and chocolate sculpting in addition to sugar paste flowers, buttercream, royal icing and creative fondant and modeling chocolate techniques.  He co-owns a high-end custom cakes and bakery in Manhattan called City Cakes.

He was featured on the first season of Fabulous Cakes and Secret Wedding both from the network TLC (The Learning Channel).  He also has been a contestant on multiple shows such as The Food Network Challenge, Sugar Dome, Halloween Wars Season 3 and 4 and the Macy’s Cake Spectacular Show all from the Food Network.  He also appeared at the Rachel Ray Show from the ABC Network and Que Noche from Telemundo.  Chef Benny not only have had created amazing cake designs for celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Bethany Frankel, Fergie, James Franco, Kevin Bacon, Mariah Carey, Madonna, Mike Mayer, and Lin Manuel Miranda but his work also has been featured on Brides Magazine, The Knot Magazine, New York Magazine, Traveller’s Magazine, American Cake Decorator and the cover of Cake Masters Magazine.

Not only Dessert Professionals have named Chef Benny Rivera as one of the top 10 cake designers in North America (2016) but The New York Cake Show have named him as one of the top 10 international cake designers (2016). On June 2017 The Golden Tier Awards and the American Cake Decorators magazine have awarded him with the “Cake Artist of the Year” award while most recently, Cake Masters Magazine from U.K. named him one of the top 10 cake artists from USA, and ACA (American Cake Awards) awarded him with cake artist of the year. His unique and amazing cake designs have become so popular that he keeps traveling around the world to teach some of his techniques and secrets through his professional workshops.

Currently, not only Chef Benny Rivera can be seeing as a guest judge on the first episode of Caketopia, a cake competition show available on HBO Max, but also as a permanent Technical Food Art Expert judge on Foodtatic Series.  A brand-new show created by Disney and available at Disney Plus.  Foodtastic is a competition show in which professionals from all over the world compete creating larger than life edible pieces of art using food all based on Disney characters and movies.