Stacked Book Cake Tutorial

Okay, this one has a lot of images!

I have been meaning to do a book cake tutorial for a while, so I am very glad that I got another chance to make one. One of my friends at our local Confederation College asked me to make the grads a cake. How could I refuse? We decided that the stacked book cake would be ideal! Let's see:

So, what do you do to make the stacked book cake?
First, start by baking your favorite flavor of cake in a rectangular pan. If you only have a square, you can simply cut one side a little to make it into a rectangle. These books had to feed a lot of mouths, so I'm using a 12x9 pan.


Cut the cake, fill it, then dirty-ice it. Place in the fridge, and let settle up.

Next, begin by rolling out white fondant. I like to use MMF.
Measure the width and height, then, using a pizza cutter, cut it out to the right size.

Next, put book page lines in it using the pizza cutter and a light touch. You don't want to go through the fondant, so make sure that you press only hard enough to make lines. Don't worry if they are perfectly straight.

Now, remove the cake from the fridge and ice again. Put the fondant on the sides of the cake first, then the front. You only need to cover three sides white, the back will be the book's spine. I like to add a little water to help the 'pages' stick to each other. Use your fondant smoother or a smooth surface to flatten the fondant.

Now, measure out the book's top and roll out enough fondant to cover the top/spine of the book. I like to use a small tape measure to be sure it will cover the whole cake.

Again, use your fondant smoother to flatten the top of the cake.

 Trim any excess fondant with a pair of sharp scissors. Once it is smooth, dust off excess powdered sugar, and you can sponge the top if you want more of a textured look.

If you wanted, prior to rolling out the fondant, you can use a pattern maker to indent the fondant with some shape.... I like it to be slightly pocked.

And that's all!
Here are some examples:

Note that in the centers of the book there are round dowels. If you plan on stacking the cakes, you will need to be sure that each cake is on a cake board of its own, and that there are dowels enough to support the weight of the cake.

When stacking the cakes, be sure to distribute the weight evenly. If you plan on moving the cakes, you may wish to consider a middle, center post to hold all the cakes together. These cakes were made to be separated.

Hope this helps, and  I hope you enjoyed the tutorial!