Paris Cutler - Planet Cake Love and Friendship: Celebration cakes to show how much you care

Planet Cake
Love and friendship

I truly believe there can be no better gift to give someone than a cake. In a world where everything is instant, to make something meaningful with time, care and love means more to the recipient than ever before.

This is my fifth book and it has definitely been the most enjoyable to write, as I have finally had the opportunity to cover my favourite topics: love and friendship. Planet Cake: Love and friendship is a sequel to my first book, Planet Cake: A beginners guide to decorating incredible cakes. So many readers wanted me to write a book that included wedding cakesfinally, here it is!

Writing this book was a wonderful challenge. It is always my number one aim to encourage beginners to decorate cakes and to do this we need to eliminate the mystery; every cake can be broken down into a step-by-step process. I have chosen cakes that have been tried and tested in our school and most are classic designs; however, each of the cakes I have chosen uses a different technique. I hope that by learning the fundamentals of these techniques you will be encouraged to design your own cakes. That is my wish for you because the joy of decorating lies in exploring your creative side rather than having to follow a step-by-step instruction book all the time. After a while, you should find you only need to refer back to this book for a technique or two.

Many of our students and all of our interns have gone on to become great decorators in their own right and, without naming people directly, some of them are now among the most well-known cake decorators in the industry. Therefore I feel very confident in saying that you can achieve great results using the instructions in this book. Dont worry about a crack here or there, it is all part of the learning process. Believe me, everyone starts somewhere: even the greatest decorators did not start off creating perfect cakes.

I regard making cakes for peopleespecially wedding cakesto be a great honour, and I take the responsibility very seriously. That said, I know for a fact that its much more special for a couple (not to mention hundreds of dollars cheaper for them) when their wedding cake is made by someone close to them. Before the cake boom and all the TV shows, most celebration cakes were made by friends and family members. I dont want to do myself out of a job, but I think these homemade cakes are the best of all. I can certainly remember all of the cakes made for me by those I love and care about.

However, I must caution you that once people see your gorgeous creations you may find yourself setting up your own cake business. I have seen this happen many times. Just think about it: how many newly engaged couples are at a wedding? Loads, so make sure that you are prepared for an onslaught of requests!

I wish you great success with all of your cakes, whether the designs are taken from this book or not. I would feel honoured if this book were the start of your lifelong love affair with cake decorating.

How to use this book

At first you may be a little daunted by the cake designs in this book; however, I have chosen cakes that I know you can achieve because we have taught all of the techniques in our decorating school. The students always marvel that, once the techniques are broken down step by step, cake decorating is not mysterious or difficult at all and their results are fantastic. I have selected designs that are popular with our customers; therefore you will be creating something that is not only beautiful but modern and fashionable. The cake trend at the moment is for clean-looking cakes.

As you browse through this book you will notice that I have limited the cake shapes to round, square and cupcakes: this allows you the opportunity to start with a single-tier cake and master setting up and covering and to gain some practice before you tackle a tiered or shaped cake. The techniques are used again and again throughout the book to allow you to become familiar with them. I will not be asking you to apply intricate lace piping or to make hundreds of sugar flowers: lets leave that for another day!

The cake-decorating techniques I have included are sugar flowers, simple figurines, cut-outs (cutting out shapes in icing using a template), quilting, easy piped dots and salutations, bows, stencilling, glitter, ruffles, hand-painting, applying diamants and a few simple three-dimensional decorations. If you find any of these techniques too intimidating, just skip them. For example, instead of decorating a cake elaborately, you could place a simple ribbon and bow at the base of each tier, adorn the top with a beautiful sugar flower (or a fresh one) and it is just stunning.

The cake designs in this book are interchangeable: for example, the engagement cakes might make beautiful anniversary cakes; or you could change one of the three-tier cakes to a two-tier cake. Just follow the advice in the techniques section and use our guides to adjust quantities of both icing and cake. The most important thing is that you achieve great results: so dont bite off more than you can chew, but simplify the design to suit your skill base and level of confidence.

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