Cake decorating

[LadyMercy]

I'm getting married next year and I'm fairly sure I can make my own wedding cake, but I'm questionning whether I can decorate it. I'd like to have a practice/go, and then if I come to the conclusion that I'm too inept, I will find someone else

Can anyone reccomend a good books titled anything like 'An idiots guide to cake decorating' or 'Wedding cake decorating for complete beginners'

Any tips on what you did also gratefully recieved.

Thank you

If you can bake the cake you can decorate it.
Keep it simple. I made a beautiful birthday cake for my mothers birthday last week. Simple smooth fondant icing topped with fresh gerberas. You can do a lot with fresh flowers.

Have a look for decorating books in the library, or a quick search on YouTube and you should find plenty of ideas and tips.

Bbc good food has some good wedding cake recipes. I did my sisters recently and just kept it simple with a ribbon and a broach pinned to it. It looked great.

Thank you all. I very much like the idea of a broach on a nice ribbon, and fresh flowers. Don't know why I didn't think of youtube, am off there next!

There are a few books for beginners. Your biggest challenge would be to level and stack the cakes well IMO. It might be worth considering a stand that you can just place the cakes on so you don't have to stack them. Like this: www.maisiefantaisie.co.uk/paris-chic-wedding-cake.html

If you think you might like a chocolate cake or one covered in chocolate (cakes can be any flavour) then the chocolate cigarello cakes like this are fairly easy in the scheme of things. They save having toget any icing smooth.

You need to be aware with fresh flowrs that they can contain pesticides or chemicals which are poisonous, so you need to make sure the florist knows they are to go on a cake. Also, some flowers are poisonous and not all florists seem to consider this, I have known florists make arrangements including ivy to go on cakes...

You can buy ready made sugar flowers from sugarcraft suppliers. They aren't top quality but would be good enough for most people.