How to Cake It: A Cakebook

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.