Where to Start with Yolanda Gampp
Yolanda Gampp is a self-taught cake artist from Toronto who turned a childhood love of baking into one of the biggest cake channels on the internet. She grew up watching her father bake and knew early on that she wanted to work with cakes. After training at George Brown College’s culinary program and spending years working at respected bakeries in Toronto, she struck out on her own and in 2015 launched How to Cake It on YouTube. The channel became famous for its hyper-realistic novelty cakes, everything from giant cheeseburgers to watermelons to sneakers, all made entirely from cake. With over four million subscribers and features on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and The Kelly Clarkson Show, Gampp became one of the most recognized cake decorators in the world. She has published two major cookbooks: “How to Cake It: A Cakebook” (2017), her foundational guide to novelty cake making, and “Layer Up!” (2022), a follow-up focused on stuffed cakes and layered flavor combinations.
Start here
How to Cake It: A Cakebook
Yolanda Gampp · 304 pages · 2017 · Easy
Themes: cake decorating, novelty cakes, sculpted cakes, buttercream, fondant
The book that brought Yolanda Gampp’s YouTube magic to the printed page. “How to Cake It” teaches you how to make eighteen show-stopping novelty cakes, the kind that look like everyday objects but are entirely edible. This is where you learn to think about cake as a sculptable medium, not just something you frost and serve.
Why Start Here
Gampp structures the book around her core method: bake sturdy cake layers, stack and carve them into shape, crumb coat, then decorate. She walks you through this process repeatedly across eighteen projects, from a giant slice of pizza to a box of popcorn to a cactus. Each cake builds your confidence with shaping, stacking, and working with fondant and buttercream in ways that go far beyond spreading frosting on a round cake.
What makes this book work for beginners is Gampp’s tone. She writes the way she talks on camera: direct, encouraging, and funny. She does not assume you already know what a crumb coat is or how to level a cake. The instructions are detailed and the step-by-step photos leave little room for guessing. She also includes her base recipes for Yo’s Ultimate Chocolate Cake, Yo’s Ultimate Vanilla Cake, and her signature Italian Meringue Buttercream, which serve as the foundation for every project in the book.
At 304 pages, the book is substantial but never overwhelming. It covers fewer cakes than you might expect from a book this size, because each project gets the space it needs for thorough instruction.
What to Expect
A hardcover with full-color photography on every page. The eighteen cake projects range from moderately simple to genuinely impressive, but all follow the same basic technique. You will need some specialty supplies like cake boards, dowels, and fondant tools, but nothing exotic. The real investment is time and patience. If you have ever watched Gampp’s videos and thought “I could never do that,” this book exists to prove you wrong.