Cakes in Bloom

Rating:
Summary: Sorry, but this one isn't very good...
Review: I saw this one at the bookstore and was just leafing through it and nothing really caught my eye, but I decided to come here and get some opinions on it to see if it was worth a second look; it wasn't surprising what I found. I went back and looked again to check on the complaints and sure enough, the photos in this book are pretty bad. It is true that they are set at odd angles and that the cakes themselves...many of them do appear to look sloppy.

I didn't see any cake designs that interested me anyway.

I am grateful to have this site to check up on books (like this one) and save my money although I do hope the author tries again with something better-just to balance out this dog of a book.

Rating:
Summary: A real stinker !
Review: I too decided to purchase this book based on the great reviews. Ultimately, I feel taken advantage of. Ms. von Marburg may be creative, but it's hard to be sure. Unfortunately she has no grasp of even basic decorating skills, so the cakes are extremely sloppy and poorly done. The gumpaste flowers and bows are overly thick, sloppy and amatuerish. The piping work is sloppy and amateurish. Even the base icing is sloppy and amateurish. Did I mention sloppy and amatuerish? The photographs are taken at an annoying angles, which I suspect is to try and hide the fact that the cakes themselves are lopsided. All in all, I can't imagine how this book ever got published.

She bills herself as "Australia's most sought-after cake designer", but I find this VERY hard to swallow considering the incredibly beautiful work I've seen come out of this country.

There are so many exquisite cake decorating books available, why bother with this? Check out Romantic Wedding Cakes by Kerry Vincent or The Well Decorated Cake by Toba Garrett, among many others, for exquisitely attractive and professional looking ideas and techniques for cake decorating.

Rating:
Summary: The Cover Is The Best Part
Review: The cake on the book's cover was the only nice cake in the book as all other cakes are quite tacky. Most pictures are in black and white or are sketched drawings. Very basic instructions on making flowers and the flowers were not very pretty or realistic looking to begin with. I own much better books and was quite disappointed with this one... quite a waste of money.