Dress Your Cupcake follows on from Dress Your Gingerbread and shows around 40 different creative cupcake projects that will greatly appear to children.
After a short but reasonably comprehensive introduction to basic techniques such as baking the cakes, making buttercream, working with chocolate and using piping bags, Dress Your Cupcake quickly moves into animal, nature, food, sporty, girly and seasonal projects.
Cartoon bright results would greatly appeal to 7-10 year old girls – I would have gazed for hours as a child.
A few ideas are clever – I liked the ground up raisins to create a “cheese burger” and softening fruit chews to turn them into pink handbags and shoes. However some results are amateurish when compared to American baking novelty books such as Angie “Bakerella” Dudley’s Cakepops or the Hello, Cupcake! series.
Some projects look untidy or unfinished – animals with blue smarties for eyes are crying out for black pupils to be drawn on with a licorice edible ink pen to make them look more alive. At best a monkey gets some clumsy chocolate icing which looks even worse. I’m certainly no expert at creating stuff like this myself but these results are more what I’d expect to see in a provincial bakery window rather than a book.
Colour schemes are hit and miss – the “burrowing mole” is digging through sugared almond-like washed out grass yet a so called “pretty parcel” has been drowned in deep blue food colouring when a delicate shade icing or wrapper might have achieved a result reminiscent of Peggy Porschen. Instead it looks tacky rather than pretty.
The tiered wedding cake project using mini marshmallows is cute but again the colours are inappropriately bright.
Strongest projects are the fruity “ice cream soda” with fondant candy stripe straws, the excellent “tea party” which features a fondant tableclothed cupcake table laid with pretend cake made from fruit chews and sprinkles alongside dinky cups and saucers and also a “sandcastle” covered in graham cracker crumbs with pale green licorice candy rolls for seaweed. However, not including graham crackers in the glossary is an omission that will confuse many UK readers.
The glossary is confusing – it’s hard to tell which is the default audience as some items are listed first with their US name and then the UK equivalent and vice versa. I am assuming the writer, who includes Ready Steady Cook for Children in her previous works, is initially writing for a UK audience even if the book is to be adapted for the States.
Verdict: The layout and standard of instructions are perfectly fine, most projects would be easy for children to follow and the results would go down a storm at kids’ parties or be highly entertaining to little girls. But if you’re a grown up with a serious interest in baking, it lacks the sophistication or polish of the more famous Hello Cupcake. Go easy on the food colouring and you’ll probably make some projects look better than they do in the book.
Dress Your Cupcake by Joanna Farrow was published by Spruce, April 2011, paperback £9.99. With thanks to Octopus Books for the review copy.
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Vanessa Kimbell says
Lovely Review Sarah. Honest and beautifully written .. as always!
Vanessa
x
Bea Parkin says
Great review, honest but not rude or harsh. Thank you
Pudding Pie Lane says
I’ve never bought many ‘cake decorating’ books before, I just scour the internet for images for try and think of my own. Thanks for the review though 🙂
The London Foodie says
Love baking, but am so bad at decorating. I did a year’s baking and patisserie course a couple of years ago, but my decorating still sucks. I think I lack patience…
Luiz @ The London Foodie
Claire says
The thing is about those really decorated cupcakes – do you really want to eat them? I always think they’re just a big mouthful of sugar.
cupcake crazy says
i love icing…. it can get a bit sickly!!!
they r so not a mouth full of sugar!! well.. technically they are but…. THEY DON’T TASTE LIKE THAT 2 ME!!! xxxx
Jane says
I was led to your blog from your amazon review 🙂 I have a copy of Hello, Cupcake which is so comprehensive and well-detailed. Was considering this book as a birthday present for my 8-yr-old niece. I think I’ll take the cue from your verdict and go ahead and purchase it for her. It could probably be used as a stepping stone for her, before she moves on to H,C! Thanks for the honest review.
cupcake crazy says
I LOVE CUPCAKES AND WATCH CAKE BOSS ALL THE TIME!!!
I LOVE TO BAKE AND MY FAVOURITE PART IS THE DECORATING!!!
THANKS JOANNA FOR THIS GREAT BOOK!!!!!!
I WISH MY SKILLS WERE BETTER THOUGH!
I WOULDN’T EAT IT THOUGHT… IT’S TOO PRETTY!!!
THANKS …. Sassy