Happy Birthday: 22 Spectacularly Easy Birthday Cakes

Rating:
Summary: Nice pictures, but several important editorial mistakes
Review: I bought this book hoping to find some good ideas for my daughter's first birthday cake. I also figured it would come in handy as she gets older. Unfortunately, while the cakes all look very pretty, they are not the sorts of cakes that a child, or possibly even a teen-ager, would find exciting. For the most part, they are very adult in their themes (with the notable exception of a cake designed to look like a diaper). The Penny Whistle Birthday Party Book has much better ideas for children's birthday cakes, albeit without color photographs. If you intend to use this book for adult parties, it might work for you. I think the title is misleading, however, in that many of the cakes tend more toward garden themes.

Rating:
Summary: Not Good for Kids' Birthdays
Review: I bought this book hoping to find some good ideas for my daughter's first birthday cake. I also figured it would come in handy as she gets older. Unfortunately, while the cakes all look very pretty, they are not the sorts of cakes that a child, or possibly even a teen-ager, would find exciting. For the most part, they are very adult in their themes (with the notable exception of a cake designed to look like a diaper). The Penny Whistle Birthday Party Book has much better ideas for children's birthday cakes, albeit without color photographs. If you intend to use this book for adult parties, it might work for you. I think the title is misleading, however, in that many of the cakes tend more toward garden themes.

Rating:
Summary: Nice pictures, but several important editorial mistakes
Review: One of the featured cake's pictures is missing, sloppy layout errors in a table of cooking times/cake size/recipe amount, and an error in ingredient quantities of one of the basic cakes made this book a disappointment. It is lovely to look at, but the errors make me doubt the overall accuracy of the recipes.

Rating:
Summary: Happy Birthday Cakes the easy way!
Review: What a great book! Finally something that lets even the most novice of bakers look like Martha Stewart! If you need a reference cookbook that will give you the abilities of a master chef but in reality, has a real life that fills your waking hours, then seriously consider Anna's efforts as presented in this wonderfully fun book. The photos are large enough and tempting enough to show you how fabulous it will look and the recipes are simple enough to make you feel confident in your skills. There is enough array of themes to give you quite a selection to choose from; in fact, the "cupcake cake" is SOOO easy, its impossible to plead novice! My only reason for 4 stars instead of 5 is because I also have her first book, "Cakes in Bloom"; THAT book is the ultimate in cake creations! You definitely need more time, patience, and skill but what fabulous works of edible art! Nothing yet has surpassed that book.