Cake Decorators - who inspires you?

[TheFowlAndThePussycat]

My brother & his fiancée have asked me to make their wedding cake! I need some inspiration for beautiful cakes. Anyone got any suggestions?

They want one central cake with individual cupcakes, I'm an averagely good baker/decorator, but the wedding isn't till October so I've got time to practise.

Thanks in advance!

I'd go on youtube and look at the amazing tutorials people do, loads of ideas there :)

Flickr is a great place to start, I get lots of ideas from there, search for cupcake wedding cakes or if there's a particular colour she wants, try that.

Get a few books from you local library - while it still exists - Peggy Porschen's Romantic Cakes book has loads of lovely ideas, also Mich Turner's Couture Wedding Cakes and May Clee-Cadman's books, which are not wedding-specific but have loads of cupcake-style ideas in them.

Otherwise I'd ask the bride and groom if they have a theme, colour, piece of material from the wedding dress or bridesmaids' outfits and go from there. Any shared hobbies? My cousin met his wife through the UK rollercoaster club and their top tier had a bride and groom in a rollercoaster with their arms I'm the air - it looked great!

Thanks all, I had seen the Porschen book & thought it looked beautiful, unfortunately the local library is very small so I just wanted some recommendations before buying anything else. Will try YouTube & Flikr too.

As for themes/colours, they really don't have one, it's not a big traditional wedding, quite low-key. They both love the countryside & wildlife but I'm not sure I'd go down that road, I'd be afraid of making it twee. I think if I suggested a few designs it would help them to choose.

Thanks again.

Watch Ace of Cakes on Good Food channel/Youtube. They are amazing and will inspire you. Heres their website www.charmcitycakes.com/

Little Venice cake company is my favourite. I have some of mich turners books , really great and good instructions

There's a US cake forum with loads of pics for inspiration called cake central

i second http:www.cakecentral for an amazing selection of pics in all styles of cakes and also to pick up lots of tips from the forums.

look on youtube for instructional videos.

in terms of inspiration,as already mentioned porchens and mich turner's books look amazing.

also try the wilton website for more ideas.

would love for somebody i know to hurry up and get married so i can make a wedding cake!!

oops www.cakecentral.com

Wow, the cake central site has thousands! Will have a good trawl through there later. Have sent the bride this one to look at from Ace of Cakes, I think it's right up her street, not sure how I'd reproduce it though!

My mum gave me her original 1970s icing kit today (I have my own but hers has much finer nozzles), so I feel like I have been given a family heirloom!

Anyway thanks again for all the help, I'm definitely feeling inspired now!

If she does like this I think you'll find it relatively easy.

To the get the decorative features, you would just cut out by hand the branches, and for the birds print out bird images from the internet and cut out to give you the shape. then place them onto fondant and cut around with a knife, and stick them all on with some water on the back or edible glue. the little flowers you would get a little cutter for, and the extra details are up to you I guess, in terms of adding some piping etc.

The key in this one is getting the fondant quite smooth, which takes practice, especially when you don't have lots going on in terms of decoration to cover up any bumps.

Good luck!

Check out Peggy Porschen, her books are beautiful and she is a cake genius in real life. She also has a shop in London if you are close by.

I love cakewrecks - for laughs and inspiration at the same time.

This thread has just popped up again on 'I'm on' - I saw the cake wrecks book on amazon & was helpless with laughter after the first three preview pages! Yes, I think that Peggy Porschen cakes look amazing, there seems to be a 'best of' book coming out that you can pre-order on amazon, so I might get that. Thanks again!