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Home › Recipes › Course Preview

Updated on March 29, 2022 by Liz Marek · This post may contain affiliate links ·

Stacked Books Wedding Cake Tutorial

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Skill level: Intermediate

Guest instructor Shani Christenson joins us to make this beautiful stacked book wedding cake. In this tutorial, you will learn how to imprint book titles into the covers, how to hand-paint the lettering and binding details for the greatest visual effect, how to create and arrange sugar rose flowers, variegated foliage. In addition, Shani breaks down how to decorate your cake boards to compliment the design with decorative paper, making the board stain-proof and how to finish the edges.

There's a lot to cover in this tutorial, so let's get our tools together and let's get started!

2:34:43 Minutes of Instruction

What You Will Learn

  • How to make a cake sculpted to look like a stack of books
  • Learn to make floral arrangements out of gumpaste and edible materials
  • How to decorate and add features to your cake board to elevate the entire design
  • Learn how to dowel this tall-standing cake to provide support and structure

Tutorial Chapters

  1. Making The Cake Board 0:56
  2. Cutting Out The Cake Boards 13:05
  3. Carving The Cakes 15:15
  4. Covering The Cakes In Butter Cream 19:13
  5. Rolling Out The Fondant Book Spines 27:44
  6. Adding The Book Titles 37:08
  7. Decorating The Spines 40:55
  8. Making The Book Covers 44:49
  9. Painting The Spines 52:24
  10. Making The Fondant Pages 56:37
  11. Covering The Books In Fondant 59:40
  12. Stacking The Cakes 1:13:15
  13. Painting The Pages 1:22:09
  14. Making The Sugar Roses 1:25:01
  15. Making The Rose Leaves 1:41:33
  16. Making The Filler Flowers Pt.1 1:46:40
  17. Making The Filler Flowers Pt.2 1:55:03
  18. Making The Ivy Leaves 2:02:04
  19. Making The Filler Flowers Pt.3 2:08:57
  20. Color Dusting The Flowers 2:12:14
  21. Color Dusting The Leaves 2:17:47
  22. Making The Bundles And Posies 2:23:44
  23. Finishing Touches 2:39:10

Downloads

Materials List

Cake Layer Template 01

Cake Layer Template 02

Cake Cutting Guide

Cake Cover Size Chart

This is the preview

Watch the full tutorial

The complete step-by-step video, plus the templates and materials list, is inside Sugar Geek University along with 170+ other cake tutorials. Every learning path opens with lessons that are free to watch, no account needed.

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About Liz Marek

Liz Marek is a professional cake artist and recipe developer who has been teaching baking and cake decorating since 2008. She founded Artisan Cake Company in Portland, Oregon in 2009 and now runs Sugar Geek Show, where she publishes kitchen-tested recipes, food science explanations, and step-by-step tutorials.

Liz is best known for sculpted and hyperrealistic cakes. She won Netflix's Is It Cake? Holiday 2 in 2025 with a hyperrealistic Santa cake, and has competed on and won Food Network cake competitions. Cake Masters Magazine named her one of the top 10 cake artists in 2017. She is the author of Artisan Cake Company's Visual Guide to Cake Decorating and a graduate of the Oregon Culinary Institute.

Her focus is on explaining not just how a recipe works but why it works, so bakers can troubleshoot instead of guess. Every recipe on this site is tested before it's published.

Liz teaches full-length cake tutorials, including sculpted and hyperrealistic cakes, at Sugar Geek University.

Primary Sidebar

Hi, I'm Liz! I'm a cake artist and recipe developer, and I won Netflix's Is It Cake? Holiday 2 with a hyperrealistic Santa. I write foolproof recipes that explain why things work, not just how.

I also teach full-length cake tutorials, including sculpted cakes, at Sugar Geek University.

More about me →

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