What makes a cake a cake? Is it its stately, cylindrical shape? Its spongy texture? Its sugary contents? Whatever preconceptions come to mind, Amy Yip, the baker behind the Brooklyn cake company Yip Studio, wants to uproot them. She specializes in naturalistic, rock-shaped cakes that, on first glance, could easily be mistaken for whimsical table décor. Some, jagged, angular, and mottled with vivid coloring, evoke the dynamism of Abstract Expressionism, while others, amorphous and adorned with flowers and slug-like swirls, give off an ethereal, almost otherworldly feel. “I’m trying to transcend what a conventional cake is supposed to look like, in terms of both the flavors and the visuals,” she says. “I think of my cakes as sculptures.”