Colette's Wedding Cakes

ANNOTATION

The ultimate wedding cake wish book! A spectacular new collection of baking masterworks from the author of Colette's Cakes and Colette's Christmas. Illustrated throughout with full-color photos and step-by-step drawings, here are more than 30 cakes--classical, whimsical, elegant, amazing--that are sure to be the centerpiece of any wedding celebration.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In Colette's Wedding Cakes, master cake decorator Colette Peters brings us her most inspired creations yet. From traditional designs to works of luxuriant fantasy, Colette has a cake for every wedding style. With detailed instructions accompanied by color photographs, step-by-step line drawings, and patterns for the decorations, Colette presents thirty-two breathtaking cake-design projects. From building a tiered cake to mastering piping techniques and fashioning royal icing and gum-paste flowers, here is everything you need to know to create the wedding of your dreams.

Wedding cakes were once strictly white, multitiered confections, but today they vary according to such factors as theme, color, location, and time of year. Colette has arranged her designs by season. Her spring masterpieces include "Spring in Bloom," a resplendent pyramid of flowers, and "Chapeau de Fleurs," a flower-adorned, white top hat emerging from its box. Summer brings "Coral Reef," an aquatic vision of coral branches and seashells, and a Victorian "Independence Day Wedding Cake," complete with bunting swags and gazebo in patriotic red, white, and blue. For autumn, Colette offers "Blue Delftware," adapting the charming blue-and-white designs of Delft pottery, and "Fan Fare," whose crushed velvet appearance, offset with gold stripes and delicate flowers, is inspired by a Japanese kimono. In a festive winter spirit, "Satin Elegance" calls to mind the bows, pearls, and quilting of a formal gown, while the "Rainbow Room Cake" evokes the art deco splendor of this fabled nightspot. For those who prefer the more traditional, Colette suggests an exquisite heart-shaped "Valentine Cake" offset with doves and a wreath of flowers. Or you might turn tradition upside down - literally - with her "Pineapple Upside-Down Cake," whose festooned white tiers seem to defy gravity as they grow wider from the bottom to the top.