The Wedding Cake Book

I just made a wedding cake for my cousin's wedding and this book was clearly the best as far as giving practical advice, explaining how to fix problems (for example, what to do if you are making Italian meringue frosting and the egg whites are whipped before the sugar syrup is up to temperature or vise versa so each recipe comes out perfectly!), and including such a wonderful array of gourmet recipes including how to make marzipan (which is so easy! using just corn syrup and almond paste which can be shaped like clay for edible decorations and then I hand tinted/painted mine using paste icing color) and chocolate plastic (simply white chocolate and corn syrup which can be molded or cut out with cookie cutters). The book has lovely photographs with the recipes and directions immediately following each photo, or, if you're like me, you can pick and choose what ideas you like and augment to your heart's content! I had fun making a pound cake with raspberry mousse filling, Italian meringue buttercream frosting (so smooth and not as sweet as the usual confectioners sugar frostings and it tastes like whipped cream), and decorations out of marzipan and chocolate plastic in the shapes of grapes, acorns, leaves, and roses for the woodland theme wedding. The advantage of marzipan is that it can make very large decorations with little fear that it will collapse. I adore this book and have Dede Wilson's other book as well and hope she'll put out more!

I have a fair amount of food service experience but I had never made a wedding cake before. Based on reviews on Amazon, I thought this would be the best resource for me. I was extremely satisfied with this book. The instructions have appropriate detail and are easy to follow. The photos provide lots of ideas for presentation and decoration. If I have one criticism, it is that I would have liked to see more instruction about how to make decorations in butter cream - roses and the like.I made three tiers and presented them on a floating tray. This enabled me to try many of the recipes in the book. I made a groom cake with the chocolate sour cream cake with ganache frosting and blackberry curd filling. For the bride cake I made the basic white cake with lemon curd and lemon butter cream frosting. And for the bride's young daughter, the smallest tier with the raspberry butter cream variation. I adjusted the recipes for altitude and they came out perfectly. The butter cream recipe is a revelation - it tastes nothing like that nasty confectioner's sugar-based concoction one normally encounters. And yes, you really can reconstitute it after it's been frozen - just be patient!Dede's recommendations for specialized equipment were also extremely helpful (get the magi-strips, also available on Amazon, they are so worth it). The cakes looked very professional and tasted great. I look forward to trying out more recipes from this book.

I bought this book several years ago for a friend's wedding and have been using it ever since. I consider myself a hobbyist baker; some training and experience, but nowhere near professional. I have made several wedding cakes for family members and close friends. This book offers a variety of exceptional icing, cake, and filling recipes. While certain cake combinations are recommended and demonstrated, the reader is encourage to mix and match flavors and decorating styles to meet their individual needs. The recommended icing is fantastic; a bit challenging to make at first, but delicious, flexible, and so easy to work with! I have several "wedding cake" books at my disposal, but this one consistently holds the recipe and/or style chosen by the bride. A close runner up (and a better book for beginners) is  Wedding Cakes You Can Make: Designing, Baking, and Decorating the Perfect Wedding Cake , also by Dede Wilson.Perhaps my only criticism of this book is that it overwhelming features round cakes; it does give some recommendations for converting to square cakes, but with the variety of other pan shapes out there, it would be nice to have a little further guidance from this otherwise comprehensive resource.Overall, if you are looking for pictures of cakes, this is not the book for you (an internet search engine will turn up far more images). If you are looking for delicious, easily adaptable and easy to follow recipes, this is a must have.

This is it! If you could choose only one book on wedding cakes, you would want one that covers the art from beginning to end---and this one does just that. I particularly like this book in comparison to the others because the emphasis is on taste, as well as looks. The cakes are not your typical piped & overpiped powdered sugar towers most of us have come to know as the typical wedding cake. Most of the cakes can be made by someone who has a pinch of ability and can follow directions. But you do not need decorating experience (I proved that last August when I made a friend's wedding cake). The recipes may not all be conventional (very few aren't), but there is something here for everyone. I admit, even I had a little trouble when my friend picked out the Buttermilk Spice Cake recipe from the book to mix with two tiers of a Kahlua fudge recipe--and DeDe's Kahlua buttercream for all three tiers--but my little test cakes turned out to be downright delicious. And the wedding cake was an absolute success! Even the caterers took pieces and raved about them! Wonderful book! Thanks DeDe!!

Of Dede Wilson's books, this is not my favorite. Truthfully, I'm just not inclined to read this book because there are so few pictures and so many words, and I don't want to read when I'm itching to get baking. I more frequently use Dede Wilson's Wedding Cakes You Can Make. When I can be bothered to read this book, there is some good information, such as the serving size info which is valuable. Some of the recipes are a bit far out which I don't have much call for, so I would say this book might not be best for your first wedding cake book, but might be an OK addition if you already have a couple of cake books.

A CV lot of great recipes and resource material

I ordered this along side one by Mitch Turner, and as far as I am concerned there is no comparison. I was looking for actual cake decorating tips and ideas as opposed to just the recipes, so it simply wasn't right for me. It was first published in 1997, and is now really very dated as a result, and hasn't inspired me with a mad desire to try any of the cakes, as they all sound overly fussy and sweet, and it seems you need a higher level of expertise than I have. (I am not an expert, but have been a happy home baker for more than 20 years)The icing "finishing touches' in the last chapter are small hand drawn illustrations, and impossible to follow. So all in all, a disappointment.

This is a great book it is informative and is good for a beginner or someone who is a old hand at cooking and decorating cakes

Not one of the better books I've bought but what can you expect for the price I paid.

Delivered very fast perfect

The book is still in really good condition