I have a teenager who loves to bake and I read this book with him in mind. I was so pleased, as there are all kinds of really doable cake designs in here. We cook gluten free (his brother is allergic to gluten) and there are no GF recipes in the book, but that's not a big deal since she mainly uses standard cake recipes (provided) and then adjusts them slightly for flavors or effects. We can easily use our go-to GF cake recipe and then stir in cocoa powder with half the batter for the marble cake, for instance, or use that as a base and add the unique flavors in her ginger cake, etc. The frostings are for the most part quite simple because they use just a few standard, real ingredients (such as heavy cream, egg whites, powdered sugar and chocolate). My son is currently off dairy too, but again it's something I can work around since I'm familiar with food substitutions and the stars of this book are the designs and the flavor combinations and not the specific recipes.

This was a really fun read for me. I love the use of British flavors like elderflower cordial and the creative designs. There are lots of wedding and celebration cakes, plus quite a few cupcakes. I skipped over the fondant designs for the most part since we don't tend to do those. The end is cookies and such and I wasn't really interested in those either. You will need some equipment for some of this stuff. I liked the cakes with the heart filling until I realized you didn't create the shape yourself but had to buy cake pans specially made for it, for example. That's to be expected with most fancy baking books, though. All in all, I really enjoyed it. It was like Pinterest in the old days, where you just scrolled through and found beautiful, tasty and brilliant inspirations. :)

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for the purpose of review.

This cookbook is spectacular! The photographery is a wonderland of delicious desserts. The talent to create desserts that look like this is just incredible. Sadly I'm no cake decorating expert so the instructions are not in-depth enough to even remotely recreate the wonders in the book. However, the recipes are yummy mine just look ordinary and like a toddler decorated it. But I've totally upped my delicious game so it is still a win.

I'm slightly lowering the review because the title makes it seem you will learn to create a showstopper. If you have decorating experience that may be true but otherwise at leasr6you get the recipes and as I said the pictures are glorious. I recieved this book from NetGalley for an honest review.