The Wedding Cake Book Hardcover – April 14, 1997

Beautifully put together book, nice quality and recipes sound luscious. If you're looking for extensive instructions on fancy sugar flowers and sophisticated piping work this does not include them; But this book does give some instructions and is well worth the purchase for the recipes alone which can be used at any celebration, even as a single tier cake. Fresh and easy decorating cake ideas that this book should be in your kitchen library. I can't wait to try them!

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.

Unlike some of the other cake decorating books that I have seen, Dede's "Wedding Cake Book" really breaks it down for the amateurs. It has been wonderfully put together from cover to cover. The presentations of extraodinary cakes and enticing recipes of which I have tried, have all turned out magnificent.She has presented a vast variety of recipes. Each comes with various scaling sizes which reduces the time of having to figuring it out yourself. Step by step procedure from mixing to decorating to assembling and transporting are all made clear.Amatuers like myself will delight in having this one not only in their collection but also by their side.

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.