Product Description

A collection of new and traditional wedding cakes, providing ideas for all brides and different types of weddings. There are 24 designs, with sections on cake accessories, table styling, favours and bombonnieres. It is divided into the following sections: Royal Iced Wedding Cakes, including a traditional Victorian cake with heavy scroll piping, the more modern look of Oriental string-work, and a three-tier hexagonal cake with ornate panelled sides; the American staked cake, with designs ranging from three to six tiers; and a sugarpaste section, containing cakes from Art Nouveau and Art Deco designs to a New England folk art look.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #418774 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

Customer Reviews

artifact from an earlier era in wedding cake design
Looking at "Contemporary Wedding Cakes" makes me realize how much wedding cake design has changed in the last two decades. This book was very useful when I started (it was the first book about wedding cakes that I bought), but now I look at it and think "did I get anything useful from it?" hmmmmm..

This book was published when the trend in wedding cakes started to change; most cooks used fruitcake or other heavy, stable base cake with buttercream icing and sugar flowers. There are some good techniques in here, and some practical information - stencils, how to measure things, and so on - but only ideas that work with solid foundation - fruitcake, carrot cake, layer cake. And some of the designs are a bit goofy, IMHO

However - nowadays mousse cake is most popular, giving a wedding cake lighter weight, with a wide range of possible flavors and features. As mousse is unstable (compared to fruitcake!), I can only work an hour or so at a time, before popping the cake back into the fridge. Modern cakes may take longer, but yield more delicate, flavorful, interesting results.

I learned how to make snowdrops from this book, and I still use their Royal Icing recipe. Otherwise this book is mainly an artifact from an earlier era in wedding cake design, and shouldn't be mistaken for a current resource.

Creativity at its Best
The cakes in this book are not for the novice cake decorator. However for the experienced cake decorator it gives directions for some of the most amazing and beautiful cakes you have ever seen. If you are skilled beyond Wilton 1-2-3, and you are experienced in the use of rolled fondant and gum paste, give this book a try.

Unique wedding cake design ideas.
I enjoyed many of the off-beat ideas for wedding cakes in this book. Some of them are not very practical for the everyday wedding couple, but that being said, I sold two cakes based on photos from this book within the first week of purchasing it! Paid for itself already. Good directions for creating each of the styles shown.