Cake Decorating Book For Beginners

Check out our favourite cake decorating books for you this National Read A Book Day, perfect for beginners through to advanced cakers!

On this National Read A Book Day (6th September), we've gathered up a lovely listicle of our favourite cake decorating books for you to peruse!

Whether you're a beginner, expert or somewhere inbetween, looking to hone your skills or learn brand new ones, this is the ultimate list of the best cake decorating books on the market.

And, even better, you can get many of these books with 10% off from our online shop! Click the links for each book to find out more.

For beginner cakers

Twenty to Make Series

20 to make sugar animals 20 to make shoes 20 to make cake pops

This series includes (surprise surprise) 20 quick and simple makes in each book, each devised around a particular theme. From a variety of fabulous cake artists, these designs featuring sugar and chocolate animals, fun cake pops, seasonal decorations, flowers and more, you'll be covered with basic sugarcraft and cake decoration tools for a variety of cakes, bakes and makes!

Cake Toppers

Cake-Toppers-book

Learn how to make 12 cute little characters, including a teddy, small dogs and penguins, perfect on their own or to decorate a cake. There are no moulds or cutters which means every character you create will have its own personality! The book comes with templates to make it easy to judge the sizes of the body parts.

Cakes for Occasions

Cakes-for-Occasions-book

Special occasion coming up? This book by Ann Pickard is for you with 25 cakes perfect for celebrations! The fully-illustrated step-by-step instructions will guide you through each tutorial effortlessly, plus the book covers basic techniques including making royal icing, covering the cake, creating cake characters and piping hair and grass!

For intermediate cakers

Compendium of Cake Decorating Techniques

An indispensable compendium of essential knowledge and troubleshooting tips. Tapping into the hottest trend in the cookery-as-craft market right now, this book is crammed with information on the art and craft of using fondant in cake decorating. Fondant is the most popular method in decorating trends because of its smooth surface, vivid colours, and chic finish. You can roll it, cut it out, model, it, and colour it. Author Carol Deacon shows you how! Almost all techniques and designs can be achieved without using specialist equipment.

Decorating Christmas Cakes

Renowned sugarcrafter, Paul Bradford demonstrates all the skills and techniques needed to decorate stunning cakes for the festive season, full of beauty, impact and humour.

He begins by showing step by step how to model basic shapes in sugarpaste, moving on to making a Santa, a penguin and a rose. Then it's on to 14 amazing projects including a hilarious snowball fight, beautiful angel cake, stunning winter ruffle with modelling chocolate, a cute teddy bear cake, an igloo with cute, funny penguins, a stunning Christmas wedding cake, White Out in which Santa has a spectacular sleigh crash, hilarious and whimsical Christmas Down Under showing Santa on his holidays, Exploding Santa in which he bursts out of the cake itself, a beautiful topsy-turvy wedding cake and a traditional gingerbread house cake.

The cake designs are the star here and everything you need to know from carving the cakes into shape, covering, icing and decorating them is shown step by step so that sensational cakes can be created using simple techniques.

Love all things cake decoration and sugarcraft? Get your regular 'sugar fix' with Cake Decoration & Sugarcraft magazine, packed with tutorials, techniques, expert advice, the latest products from the cake world and so much more!

Vintage Cake Decorations Made Easy

Learn to make beautiful, intricate vintage-style sugarpaste decorations for cakes. A vintage look is a classic look and one you can achieve with ease for your own cakes and cookies using Christina Ludlam's exquisite book. Vintage Cake Decorations Made Easy is a sumptuous and accessible guide to creating sugarpaste masterpieces using modern tips, tricks and techniques that are available to everyone – from professional cake decorators to home bakers. Christina's book is filled to the brim with clear, step-by-step instructions, mouth-watering projects and gorgeous photography, and in it she reveals her secrets to help you create stunning vintage-style cakes that are bound to impress.

The book begins with guidance on how to cover your cakes, colour mixing and essential techniques such as using mould and mats, then leads you through nine stunning and stylish cake decorating projects that look almost too beautiful to eat! From vintage-style cupcakes to a magnificent wedding cake, you'll not believe how easy it is to create a sugarpaste masterpiece.

For experienced cakers

The Kew Book of Sugar Flowers

Kew Book of Sugar Flowers Cassie Brown

In the Kew Book of Sugar Flowers, sugarcraft specialist Cassie Brown teaches you how to craft stunning, authentic-looking flowers and foliage using flower paste (gum paste). The Kew Book of Sugar Flowers is the perfect book for the established sugarcrafter looking to develop their skills and take their cake-decorating capabilities to the next level. Readers with a particular interest in flowers and plants will also love this book from Search Press, for its painstaking recreation of flora in flower paste (gum paste), and the book is endorsed by the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew giving extra credibility to the stunning realism of the flowers that Cassie Brown has recreated.

The Modern Cake Decorator: Airbrushing on Cakes

Push the boundaries of cake decorating your airbrush can do so much more than just shading cakes! Get creative with Cassie Brown as she shows you airbrushing techniques to turn all your cakes into showstoppers. Instructions for ten cakes are illustrated by clear step-by-step pictures showing just how Cassie achieves her results. From fun space cakes for children's parties to a breathtaking wedding cake decorated with delicate sugarcraft flowers, this book will unlock your baking and decorating potential.

Sensational Sugar Fairies

Renowned sugarcrafter, Frances McNaughton, the author of several best-selling books on sugar fairies, creates a magical world in sugarcraft to decorate cakes for fairy lovers everywhere. She begins by revealing the tools and readily available materials she uses and goes on to show techniques such as modelling all the basic shapes required, sculpting with tools, dusting or painting to add colour and texturing with royal icing.

There are then ten step by step projects showing how to make beautiful fairies in fairyland scenes. Some are funny or whimsical such as Buxom Fairy and Fairy's Bathtime, others have a fashionable twist like Steampunk Fairy and Gothic Fairy. Some create a world of folklore such as the Flower Fairy's Baby and My Friend the Bird, and others are perfect for special occasions – Be My Wife, Christmas Tree Fairy and again, Flower Fairy's Baby. Many, like Peacock Fairy, are stunningly beautiful. Frances McNaughton is building on the success of her best-selling Twenty to Make: Sugar Fairies with these more developed designs, including scenes for the fairies to star in.

Modern Cake Decorator: Stencilling on Cakes

Popular television presenter and champion of craft Stephanie Weightman brings her expert knowledge to the world of sugarcraft, with her pioneering new techniques for stencilling on cakes. This book includes 15 stunning step-by-step projects, simple techniques for brilliant results on shaped cakes, tiered cakes, mini cakes and cupcakes, new techniques, plus all the instructions you need to create beautiful cakes in a contemporary style.