Cool Cake Toppers ─ Put Anything You Want on a Cake

How to make fun and quirky cake toppers for more than 30 special occasions.

The craze for decorated cakes shows no sign of slowing down. Ever more bakers want to personalize their celebration cakes, whether for a birthday, a wedding or just plain fun. Cupcakes are the new standard.

Cool Cake Toppers shows how with minimal skill and the essential equipment bakers can create entertaining toppers for cakes and cupcakes. Step-by-step instructions and photographs illustrate the different sugarcraft techniques, including the use of fondant, buttercream icings, coloring, candies, nonpareils and sprinkles.

Recipes are accompanied by expert advice on cake and frosting options, alternatives to sugarcraft, such as printing and 3-D effects as well as practical tips on presentation displays and gift boxes. There is also guidance on using the skills learned to make new topper designs.

Cool Cake Toppers includes decorations for all of life's joyful milestones:

• Baby -- Baby shower, new baby, Christening, naming ceremony
• Children's Birthdays -- First birthday, toddler, young child, teenager
• Adult Birthdays -- 18, 21, 30, 40 and beyond, female birthdays, male birthdays
• Celebrations -- Graduations, anniversary, thank you, new home, tea party
• Weddings -- Engagement, bridal shower, stag party, wedding, favors
• Seasonal -- New Year's, Mother's Day, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving and more.

Cool Cake Toppers provides ideas and instruction for the amateur cake maker as well as inspiration for the professional. It is packed with enough delightful creations to inspire the baker in everyone.

Amanda Rawlins and Caroline Deasy are the owners of Cupcake Occasions, which specializes in custom-made and celebration cupcakes using techniques and products they learned in America. They have been featured on blogs highlighting their quirky ability to "put anything on a cupcake." They live in Suffolk, U.K.