When you are looking at pictures of beautiful cakes online or in magazines, it is easy to be drawn into the wonderful world of perfect cakes that are not always possible in the real world. Unfortunately, not every baker can make the kind of cake you see in these photos because, mostly, it is not at all possible.

Magazines have people such as food stylists and assistants whose job it is to keep the cake looking absolutely perfect. They work nonstop to fix the sagging, dripping and leaning that is bound to happen when a cake is sitting for a while or is under the heat of bright lights. And even if their efforts still do not produce a perfect cake, they can touch up the pictures in PhotoShop. In addition, not all the cakes are made edible ingredients because most cakes that appear in magazines have Styrofoam filling and are merely topped with icing.

This is not where the magazine fantasy world stops. The magazines may have great ideas, but they do not have to deal with logistics or a real budget. One such example are mini-cakes, where the guests get their own little confection rather than the couple having one large cake that they cut up. These mini-cakes are supposed to double as a favor, but this would require the bakery to construct many mini-cake boxes because boxes don’t come in a mini size. Add this in with the time consuming and intricate (and thereby expensive) decoration that each cake would require and you will see that this only a great theory but not really possible in practice. It may be easy for the magazines to produce 5 or 10 little cakes but when you think about it in terms of a real wedding size, it is apparent that is would be extremely expensive and time consuming. The best way to design your cake is not to try and replicate a cake that you have found a photo of either online or in a magazine, but rather you should find the elements of different cakes that you love, like the shape, details or color, and use these as inspiration for your individual design. Share these elements with your baker and your cake designer will be able to work from what you want to develop the cake you have envisioned.