I have made a few doctors cakes (here and here) and even a nurse cake. But this cake was to celebrate the company’s 10 anniversary. I kept the cake very simple. I used an extruder to form long red ropes of fondant and placed them on the bottom tier to look like blood pressure. Then I draped a stethoscope down the side of the cake. The top of the cake had the company logo cut completely out of fondant. I used a shell border mold to add the blue border around the cake. Simple, cute, and perfect for the occasion. Congrats on 10 years!

I rarely work with buttercream cakes, I much prefer working with fondant. But the couple getting married was having a rustic backyard wedding and dreamed of having a simple yet elegant cake to match. Making the buttercream look rustic and perfectly imperfect is so much harder than it sounds! Luckily I was able to achieve the look I wanted without too much trouble.

The top of the cake was to have a few simple flowers. Here I made three sugar peony flowers from white gum paste. I don’t make my peonies with actual instructions, I just add petals until I like the look of them. I attached the flowers to a round disk of gum paste and placed that on top of the cake. Green gum paste leaves were added in between the flowers.

The final touch was some shimmery green petal dust that I added to the centers of the flowers. It gave the flowers a bit more dimension. I love how this cake turned out, I can’t believe I was so nervous to pull this off.

I love making this cake! I have made one just like this before for another teacher retiring. I didn’t make it exactly the same as the last one, I had to change the design up just a bit but a few elements definitely needed to stay. Book cakes are fun to make and work for a variety of occasions. Here’s one to celebrate a graduation and another to celebrate a big birthday!

I had to include the edible lined paper cake topper. I cut these pieces out of thinned out gum paste. I cut them into two different sizes and added holes down one side using a round piping tip. I cut the bottoms of the pages at an angle so they would look staggered on top of the cake instead of straight across. I used a blue and red edible marker and a ruler to make the lines on the page. I made some pink rubber erasers out of pink fondant that I molded by hand. The pencils were made in advance so they would be firm enough to pop out of the cake. I know that pencils wouldn’t actually be sticking out of books, but I love how this looks! It gives great height and dimension.

The middle book cake is my favorite one because I sponge painted it to look like a black and white marble notebook. Remember those?! So classic. I also included some chalk and an eraser. The chalk was made by rolling some fondant or gum paste in a long even rope and cutting it in different lengths to give some interest. The eraser is made from black fondant that I shaped by hand. I used a corn starch duster to tap some corn starch onto the eraser to look just like chalk dust.

The cake board brings the whole cake together. I used some black royal icing and spread it all over the cake board. I used a thicker consistency royal icing for some additional texture. I used white gel food coloring and a food-safe paintbrush to paint on the message. The additional chalk dust was dusted on with more corn starch.