Ron Ben-Israel

Ron Ben-Israel was born in 1957 in Israel

Ron Ben-Israel was born in Israel in 1957 and grew up in Tel Aviv. His parents were Holocaust survivors. His mother, born in Vienna, made maps for the government, and his father Moshe, who survived Auschwitz, worked in printing.

He studied dance at the Thelma Yellin High School for the Arts. After his army discharge he began a career in modern dance. He danced with the Batsheva and Bat-Dor companies and toured abroad, later moving to the United States.

In 1993 he left dancing in New York, partly because of arthritis, and took temporary jobs making cakes and designing shop windows. Betty Van Nostrand and Martha Stewart noticed one of his cakes in a window and mentored him. He launched Ron Ben-Israel Cakes in 1999 and specializes in sugar paste flowers.

In 2007 he baked a large cake for the 100th anniversary of the Plaza Hotel. From 2011 to 2013 he hosted Sweet Genius on Food Network. He has judged shows such as Chopped, Cake Wars and Netflix's Nailed It! and Sugar Rush. He is married to Hiroyuki Aihara.