Compendium of Cake Decorating Techniques: 300 tips, techniques and trade secrets

I was a little nervous buying this book as I wasn’t sure if it was the right one for me. But I t is brilliant!! It gives you a list of basic tools you need for baking and decorating and nifty homemade alternatives; it provides basic recipes for cakes, fondants and buttercreams; it gives step by step instructions to making different designs and toppers; it provides templates for toppers; some basic instructions on tempering and using chocolate and throughout the book are handy tips, such as what to do if the icing is getting too warm from your hand etc. Some of the info is fairly basic especially if you are a little creative anyway or have a little experience in cake decorating, but it is a really useful book for beginners/intermediate level as it doesn’t overwhelm but keeps things simple and at the same time provides enough information to challenge the decorator to push themselves to a new level. I am excited to get started!!!

Really love this book. I got it as I like baking birthday cakes for my son and wanted inspiration and good ideas for unique cakes. I feel now confident enough to try using fondant and designing my own (Lego) cake. The writing is clear, the pictures helpful and it is packed with tips and suggestions. The recipe for the chocolate cake is excellent, I made it once already and will be making it again as a chocolate orange cake for the New Year. Highly recommended.

A great little book full of helpful tips and great ideas. As well as cake and icing recipes, there is easy to follow sections on decorating with fondant icing and making small animals and figures, plus some great ideas for decorating your cakes, using different icings and even chocolate. How to get special affects etc, makes this a must for anyone who likes to make their own special cakes.

I just wanted to say how absolutely brilliant this book is. An absolute must for anyone like myself who is getting into cake decorating. This book gives an overview of tools your likely to need, some basic cake recipes, talks about different types of icing and the techniques and is a great reference as well as gives tips for things that go wrong. Has been written in a very easy to follow way and even gives you templates for fondant icing figures e.g snowman and explains how to do it. Brilliant. Im so thrilled and excited to get going on my dauhter's first Birthday cake :)

Bought as a gift, we spent hours looking through this together and discussing, great information and ideas. lots of arrrrrhhhhh that's how they do it :) Quality time

This book is love at first sight! I thought I had purchased more of an academic type of a book, but this is anything and everything you can ask for as a novice cake baker. Of course recipes can always be debated and inevitably tastes vary, but all the how-tos you could think of as a beginner seem to be included. BOOK STRUCTURE: About this book (excellent overview!) Chapter 1: Cake basics Chapter 2: Fondant Chapter 3: Buttercream Chapter 4: Chocolate How to make and use templates Topper directory Conversions Glossary and suppliers Index CHAPTER 1: Tools, recipes, how to bake, how to prepare the cake for decoration, how to make cakes on miniature scale, how to stack several cakes in different ways; incredible. CHAPTER 2: Types of fondants including a recipe to make your own, colouring it in different ways, storing it, using it to decorate cakes of different shapes and sizes, how to cover the board itself in a few different ways, painting and using stencils, making swags and frills and loops of fondant, how to "push patterns into" fondant, writing on it, making figures from it (both people and animals) or flowers and leaves, and finally a section on marzipan. CHAPTERS 3 AND 4: As detailed as the fondant chapter. WEAKNESSES AND STRENGTHS: - There are numerous photographs. I feel like I could make a cake successfully without having taken a course in person. - The text is quick and easy to read. - Trouble-shooting comments are included. - The look is inviting and positive! - Can't seem to find weaknesses at this point. I have a very good idea of what techniques are used in cake baking and decorating now. Many books focus on just one of them, but this overview is fantastic. If you don't have any books on this topic, I think you don't need but "Compendium of Cake Decorating Techniques" to get started.

Average info

This book is excellent, the author Carol Deacon gives detailed information on all the processes of producing a perfect celebration cake, with handy tips at each stage. There are 4 chapters to this book: Section 1 Cake Basics, Section 2 Fondant, Section 3 Buttercream and Section 4 Chocolate. I followed the recipe for the Pound cake for a large 10" square and used the oven temperature at 150, but beware that ovens vary and my cake took 11/4 hours to bake, as opposed to the 2 hrs written in the book. I highly recommend to anyone who bakes and decorates cakes to purchase this book.

Chouette livre, toutes les recettes de gâteaux de base pour ensuite pouvoir les décorer. Je n'ai pas encore testé les recettes donc je ne peux pas en dire davantage.

A useful book

Um livro muito básico; sim que é barato, mas já poderia ser algo mais original

Vielen dank ich bin happy habe schnell erhalten

Je recommande ce livre pour avoir les bonnes astuces pour créer des desserts comme gâteau en pâte à sucre, pop cakes, muffins... beaucoup de photos et explication en anglais. Très pratique ce livre.