Customer Reviews

Cake Decorating for the first time

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Cake Decorating for the 1st Time, is a neatly and creatively pieced together book. While the last few pages contains a colorful catalog of some of Jaynie's work, be aware this book's focus is far from wowing you with many pictures of cakes that are far beyond your skill level or with no instructions. Jaynie goes into detailed, step by step instructions in each chapter telling the novice just how to decorate a cake with simple and short, yet precise directions. Each step comes with near flawless color photography guiding the reader along. The meat of the book covers many tips and tricks used by the pros that can easily be mastered by us mere mortals; such as how to make fondant, ganache, how to decorate a bundt cake, or how to make gum paste as well as some suggestions as to what to do with each; while the first bit of the book goes over tools of the trade, again accompanied with photographs.
At the start of each chapter, the reader is provided with a list of ingredients and other supplies that will be needed to complete the chapter's project, which is what each chapter basically is.
Quite simple and concise, yet wonderfully decorative Cake Decorating really does make decorating your cake like the pro's a breeze. At this low price (at least at the time of this review) I'd recommend purchasing Cake Decorating for the 1st Time if you are new to cake decorating and looking to go the next mile.
Here's wishing you well on your baking endeavors.

For most things, the instructions are clear and easy to follow- great for learning the basics. However, something is wrong with the chocolate cake recipe. It tells you add 1/4 CUP cinnamon (although the picture shows what looks like a 1 tsp) and no where in the directions does it tell you to add sugar. This is the only mistake I've found so far, but I haven't tried everything yet.

This book is grim! Well, I own all kinds of cake books and teach it as well. I am always on the look out for books to help my students. THIS IS A WASTE OF YOUR MONEY! It is as though it were done by several people. The cover photo is lovely, inside is very amaturish. The second cake picture in the book looks good; at first, then upon inspection, you see the sides are bowed. Fourth cake has real daisies just stuck into the cake willy-nilly. We all know how funky daisies smell (even though they are charming), do you want that taste in your frosting, do you really want to eat them? Yuck! The cake used in the table of contents is another grim job. It has these blobs with protruding points all over it. Her topsy-turvy cake is just plain awkward looking. Her cholate dipped strawberries are sad and awful. Then you see the cake on 103 and again, it's done by someone else; too well done to be hers! Never have I ever seen anyone spraying down a table and loading it up with powdered sugar to facilitate rolling out fondant. A great way to dry it out in a hurry. Buy Toba Garret's books or Nicolas Lodge's books, you will get real help and not learn bad habits.