I’m much more of a cupcake baker than a cake baker; however, I’ve always been curious about cake decorating techniques that I might be able to translate into my passion for cupcakes. The cute cover and the publisher’s blurb piqued my interest, even though some of the negative reviews about the simplicity of the book and the repetition of the designs gave me a moment’s pause. Since I like to learn - and would have ample time to read the book over a week’s vacation - I decided to request it from NetGalley and was delighted when the publisher approved my request.

The book begins with an introduction to baking and decorating basics. Of course, the first part of the blog is dedicated to how the author went from a sloppy novice baker to Ms. Coco Cake Land. She encourages her readers to “Practice, make an ugly cake, then figure out your mistakes and make a better one.” The baking tips are fairly basic - tips like preheating the oven, reading through the entire recipe before baking, filling each cake pan evenly, and completely cooling the cakes before frosting. The list of baking and decorating equipment describes the purpose of each recommended piece of equipment in alphabetical order, with some humor. I was a little disturbed by the notion that she recommends reusing the clear disposable piping bags after washing with hot water and dish soap. I did learn some new tricks in the section about filling and frosting to the crumb coat stage, namely that a bench scraper can be used to even out the crumb coat and that the crumb coated cake should be chilled for 20 minutes to “lock in” the crumbs. The section about piping basics was a bit confusing, as much of what the author was describing was difficult to visualize without clearly labeled photographs or other visual aids. However, I thought that the call out box on “Alternatives to Fondant” was very useful, especially since I’ve never worked with fondant, and hope not to have to do so if at all possible.

After an introduction to baking and decorating basics, the book is divided into three parts: cute cakes, pretty cakes, and basic recipes. These are followed by about twenty pages of templates and resources, which all together makes the book a very manageable size. The cute cakes include animal cakes - like the blue bear, the white terrier dog, the panda, and the rainbow unicorn cake - and other random cakes - like the vintage sailboat, the cactus guy, the strawberry, and the burger. The range of the pretty cakes seems more limited, as that category was dominated by floral design cakes with a few surprise cakes, including a rainbow inside cake and a checkerboard inside cake.

Each cake decorating recipe is preceded by a full page full color photograph of the finished cake for reference. To the left of each cake decorating recipe is listed the ingredients for the cake base, the ingredients for the cake decoration, and the tools required by the recipe. Each recipe begins with an introduction, which is usually either a paragraph about the author’s memories associated with the cake or a description of how to customize the cake decorations. The recipe steps are numbered paragraphs, which sometimes begin with a blue summary sentence along the lines of “Prepare the cake.”, “Pipe the fur.”, and “Make the fondant features.” The paragraphs themselves seemed relatively easy to follow, especially since a number of the recipes were followed by step-by-step pictures. However, the paragraph instructions were uneven across the recipes; sometimes the cake baking and crumb coat frosting instructions would be extremely detailed, to include refrigerating the crumb coated cake before frosting, and sometimes those instructions would barely be three sentences.

I was disappointed that the first six cute cakes were almost exactly alike, except for the shapes of the fondant features. Each was a three layer round cake piped with the multi-opening tip to simulate fur and then had fondant face pieces and ears attached to the top and/or side of the cake. Instead of piping orange buttercream and black buttercream for the tiger, the author opts for an entirely orange cake with black fondant accents to simulate tiger stripes only on the tiger’s face. The panda is very similar - instead of piping black and white buttercream, the author opts for an entirely white cake with black fondant accents on the face only. The pink lamb and the brown curly haired pup are also almost exactly the same, with the exception of the flavor of frosting used.

I was pleased to see that the basic recipe set included a vegan cake and a vegan frosting; however, I was very disappointed that not even the vegan cake was gluten free. The vast majority of my baking for work and friends has to be gluten free because of the number of celiacs that I feed. So if I were to bake from this book, it would be either limited to my family or I would use a cake recipe from my other cake book, which has gluten free options.

The full color photographs in this book were beautiful - especially the ones of the pretty cakes. I also appreciated the occasional photo series that illustrated the step by step instructions for some of the more challenging cakes, like the checkerboard cake and the floral letter cake.

Overall, I wasn’t a huge fan of this book because the cute cakes seemed so basic and repetitive, and the pretty cakes seemed to just be a number of different ways to arrange buttercream flowers on top of a cake. However, I really did find the method of constructing a checkerboard cake (without a fancy checkerboard pan) to be pretty fascinating. I also learned how to make buttercream flowers, shell borders, rosettes, and drop stars, so I’m fairly confident that I can step up my cupcake decorating game. Since that was my objective in reading the book, I really can’t complain.

I have yet to bake anything from the recipes in this book. When I do, I will update my review.

Recently, I went through a stint where I wanted to make all of the delicious things that I found on Pinterest. Now, if we are being honest, we all know how that generally turns out for people. My kitchen was overrun with cookies that would not set up (because of the humidity) and cakes that could have earned their place in the "nailed it" hall of fame--if anyone had gotten a chance to snap a picture. So I appreciate Lyndsay's sweet encouragement and story of her attempts and pushing forward. Babies can be expected to bake a perfect cake... truth. Neither can this "baby".

I loved the colorful photos and stories that she shares throughout the book. You can feel how sweet she is and just how much she loves what she does (and those that she does it for)!

🍰 🍰 🍰 🍰 🍰

COCO CAKE LAND by Lyndsay Sung teaches you to make 30 darling party cakes, each featuring a colorful vintage-meets-modern aesthetic inspired by kawaii cute. Discover pink cats, blue bears, foxes, pandas, plus buttercream rosettes, drippy ganache, and rainbow layers. Includes recipes for cakes and frostings, tutorials on decorative piping and details on fun finishes. Author back story: Sung is a young breast cancer survivor (her son was only a year old when she was diagnosed). Her joy in surviving is evident in every radiant page. 5/5

Thanks to Roost Books and NetGalley for the review copy. Opinions are fully mine.

#CocoCakeLand #NetGalley

I've been a fan of Coco Cake Land for a while, following their Instagram page and ooooh-ing and aww-ing over the cute and beautiful cakes. I've also appreciated how encouraging Lyndsay is to her fans- reposting people's creations of her designs. Coco Cake Land is the perfect book for anyone interested in cake decorating and adorable things. All the designs have a buttercream base, with occasional fondant features, which I appreciate, as I am not a big fan of the taste of fondant. The instructions are easy to follow, the cakes are adorable, and there are enough recipes listed that make a purchase seem worthwhile. I know I will be adding this adorable book to my shelves, and hopefully creating some cute creations of my own.

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Sung, L. (2018, August). Coco Cake Land. Boulder, CO: Roost Books. ISBN: 978-1611803150

I have not decorated a lot of cakes lately but when I was scrolling through NetGalley, this cover of this book caught my eye.  (Sung calls the technique on this turquoise bunny cake adding fur, but to me it looks like a knitted animal, which somehow adds to the appeal).  It seems like a billion years ago now, but I did take the first Wilton cake decorating class (but I never mastered shell borders or icing roses!)

The appeal of Sung's cakes are their simplicity.  They don't involve lots of fancy pans or tools.  Instead, they are almost all built on the same base of 3 8-inch layers.  Also they feature buttercream!  (I am happy to see someone who understands that fondant dries out and doesn't usually taste very good to start with.)  What makes them special and fun are the bright colors (both outside and in) and the details, whether frosting, fondant or cut from paper.

This is also a little bit of the drawback to this book, in my opinion.  That is, once you've made one layer cake animal with ears, you can easily figure out how you might make a different animal.  I know that I can't fault someone for not writing the book I would want to see, but one thing that might have been nice here would be a section of all the parts/steps and how to mix and match them to make new cakes.  Son in that sense, this book might serve as inspiration for the reader (baker? cake decorator?) to create their own designs or variations of Sung's creations.

The book inspired me to visit Sung's blog, where you can see many more of her cakes and learn more about her story.  I might have to make a Rainbow Caticorn cake!

Reviewed from Netgalley electronic copy.  Amazon Affiliate: If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase

A beautiful collection of stunning cakes fit for every celebration. This book is filled with gorgeous photos of brightly colored cakes that will have your mouth watering. Honestly, every recipe looks amazing, and you couldn't pay me to choose a favorite out of all of them. This would make the perfect addition to anyone's kitchen counter. I simply loved it cover to cover.

A huge thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I truly appreciate it!

This is a fantastic book for cake decorators! I made a few of the recipes and they were a delight to make. They did not come out perfect (reader errors), but I had a great time.

Coco Cake Land is a fun and attractive book for beginner bakers interested in cake decorating. The cake decorating styles are split between cute and pretty. The cute cakes are mostly animal shaped and the pretty cakes are flower focused. Some basic tools and techniques are needed for these projects. Sung does a nice job in her written explanations, but at certain points it was lacking in visual instructions. Such as when she’s explaining how to pipe frosting into different designs, especially the floral ones. Bakers may have to consult other resources. Basic recipes are provided (including vegan options) toward the end. Although I wouldn’t recommend this book for someone new to cake decorating, it’s overall a fun book full of inspiring decorating ideas.

This is a great book for people looking for tips on cake baking and decorating for parties. It has recipes for icing and cakes as well, and is a book that is more than just the basic tips. It has a lot of basic tips and tutorials on fondant and piping, as well fancy details like washi tape flags and paper toppers. It is a very good book for any baker whether a beginner or very experienced, this book has lots of information in order to create colorful, cute, and completely unique cakes.

So cute!
Easy to follow recipes, cute cakes that can be made using basic tools by the average home cook.

These cakes are seriously cute! I am going to try at least a few of them, and although I know that my skill level won't make them look exactly like the photos in the cookbook, my kids will appreciate the effort nonetheless!

As a baker I was very eager to preview this book for netgalley. The beginning of the book was great for a beginning baker or an experienced baker that wants to update some of their tools. Lyndsay Sung goes into great detail, photos included, of the tools a baker needs to successfully bake and decorate a cake. She describes how these tools are used in the various steps of baking/decorating. This book also includes some cute cakes that bakers can make at home for various celebrations, especially for children. With a little practice the home baker will be able to decorate their child's birthday cake like a pro. Recipes for her light and fluffy cakes and her buttercreams are also included. I can't wait to try her recipes especially the buttercream. If you are interested in learning to bake and decorate cakes at home for your family this would be the book for you.

You can judge this book by its cover. There are a lot of cute cakes, including lots of animal designs like the bunny cake on the cover. I think the lamb cake and cat cake designs are especially cute, and I like the technique used to make the icing look like scales on the fish cake. I also like that Sung's designs are based on basic, round layer cakes, which is practical for most bakers. You won't need to get new specialty pans or a lot of new decorating or baking equipment to pull off these cake designs.

The book really focuses on design, with basic flavours. There are about 10 basic recipes for things like vanilla cream cake, vanilla or chocolate buttercream, chocolate ganache, cream cheese frosting and Swiss meringue kisses. So if you're looking for a bigger collection of recipes with flavours off the beaten baking cookbook path, and lots of different frostings and filling recipes, this is not the book for you. These are cakes that are more about cute or pretty appeal than they are likely taste sensations.

I'm not too enthused by the about the amount of food colouring used in both the decoration and cake components of a lot of the cakes in this book. But I guess if you only eat one or two blue bird, pink lamb, orange fox or rainbow cakes a year, perhaps you will be okay. All things in moderation, I suppose - even colourful cuteness.

If you are thinking about ordering a copy of this online, but would first like to get more of an idea of what style of cakes are in it, Lyndsay Sung and her Coco Cake Land blog are easy to find online and on social media, where there are lots of pics of her cakes.

I read an advance digital copy of this book from the publisher Roost Books via Netgalley.

PS: I wanted to know out what Coco in the title referred to, so I asked Lindsay Sung on Facebook. Turns out she had a beloved kitty named Coco.

#CocoCakeLand #Netgalley

This book is adorable. Zero doubts about the amount of cute contained in these pages. The ideas for cakes are clever and the suggestions for non-edible decorations are interesting while still being simple. It as an exceedingly colourful book, held up with various go to recipes for cake and icing.

My one issue is the lack of step by step photos, especially for piping techniques. The written descriptions are fine but should be supported by photos. For a first time cake baker you really need all the help you can get.

Book was ok. Did not really appeal to me but would be great for a beginner.

Seriously adorable cakes. I really loved this book and will most likely try these.

I loved looking through this book. It's filled with cute, creative cakes and how to make them. The beginning starts with your basics and grows from there. For beginners or pros, those looking to cater to their sweet tooth, you'll enjoy this cakebook. A great addition to any library shelf as well.

This book reminds me of the birthday cakes from my childhood. You know the ones, the shaped cakes where someone pipped the details in little stars. This book is a resurgence of that style. The nice thing is that most of the cake are circular and you use the icing for all the detail. My fav cake was the unicorn.

This book is way too cute! I can't wait to get my hands on a copy and start baking. Great photography! Autobiographical tidbits with each recipe without being too long-winded. Inspirational and helpful for bakers of every experience level.