The Naughty Cakes book shows step-by-step recipes for 19 different “adult” cakes. The book is a hardcover book and has full-color pages. It’s a pretty large book at a little larger than a piece of paper in size. It’s authored by Debbie Brown and includes 80 pages. This book even includes an index. The front cover shows an example of the cakes she makes as well as the back. This doesn’t really scream “adult”, but your grandmother or other stuffy person may find this uncomfortable to be around. There isn’t anything particularly “adult” though inside of this book unless you count nude cake characters as adult.
This book is so cute though. I always like to think that I have some hope at being a decent cook, but I know that’s not going to happen. I like to think that I’ll take the time and make something, but it’s just not me – I feel like it takes so much time. Either way, I got to indulge my fantasy with this cook book when we ended up trying to make a cake with it. It turns out it was pretty above our skill level, and the cake ended up so badly that I’d be embarrassed to post the pictures on the internet.
However, I don’t blame that on the book in the slightest. But I’ve never actually made a cake before, and that’s what I blame it on – it’s hard to do something like this when I don’t even have the basics down. It requires things like sculpting a cake or covering a cake in sugar paste which is something I’ve never actually done though I’ve seen it done a lot on wedding cake programs on the television. (Turns out that you really don’t learn anything just by watching television.) However, for someone that regularly makes birthday cakes or cooks, they might have a better chance at making something resembling the finished product. Can’t say it was a waste of time though – I had a lot of fun, and it was a great date night.
The book makes it pretty easy for beginners – not to say you’ll make a gorgeous cake on the first try, but with practice, you definitely could. It provides everything you need to make all the cakes in here (all the knowledge anyway – not the materials.). It gives you the cooking times for each type of cake, what materials are required at the beginning of the chapter, and instructions on how to do things at the beginning of the book. There are easy-to-follow pictures given along with the instructions so you can keep up with what the author is telling you even if the description sounds confusing. You also will be able to compare your cake with what she has so far which is always nice.
So what types of cakes will you be making? Well, there’s a cake of a car with butts mooning out of the side, a strip-club cake, a cake of a close-up of a butt with tight shorts, a wet-t-shirt cake, a “sex god” cake with a shirtless man with a cloud covering up his naughty bites, a “thong viewing” cake with two girls and a guy laying out on the beach and the guy checking them out, and lots of others for a total of 19 different cakes. Rest assured, you won’t be sculpting any tiny cake penises – the “nudity” is mostly reserved for a butt here or there.
The book starts off with Basic Recipes. This includes a recipe for the cake type you’ll need (store-bought cakes are too flimsy and won’t hold up to crumbling) as well as recipes on how to make the buttercream and sugar paste. You make the cake, then the buttercream goes on, then the sugar paste, so it’s a lot more involved than any of the cakes I’ve made in the past. It also gives recipes for modeling paste, sugar glue, sugar sticks, quick pastillage, and edible glitter. All of those are finer pieces that used for decorations and whatnot.
After that, the book jumps straight into the basic how-tos of cake making including sculpting a good cake, rolling out sugarpaste, coloring sugarpaste, covering a cake board and cake with sugar paste, and obtaining a good finish. All of these instructions are great for those who’ve done a bit of cooking, but for us, were a little above our heads. We still enjoyed trying though.
The next two pages show a picture and talk about what specific cake items will be useful in your cake attempts. It lets you know which items are needed and which items are just suggested for better results. It all looks pretty “high-tech”, but we have most of these items in our kitchen. I do recognize some of the more helpful items as ones that I’ve seen on those wedding cake shows. Looking over this page makes me want to try making one of these cakes all over again.
That’s it for the introductory stuff, and it jumps into the cakes at that point. The cakes do have a large picture at the beginning to show you what you’re getting into, and then it goes into what you need as well as the instructions. I wish more pictures were included in the book than already are, and it’s obvious the book was written for those with some minimal cooking experience. However, it didn’t mean I didn’t enjoy trying, but the descriptions along didn’t give me enough to go on to make an amazing cake, so it didn’t turn out so well. On a second try, I’m sure I’d do better though.
Overall, the Naughty Cakes book was just downright amusing. If you have a baker in your life, this makes a fun little present for them to give them new ideas to try out. If you want to try making a little cake that will be a hit at a bachelorette party (or just a gathering of friends), you should attempt this one too since it’s just fun. (Plus, if you make the cake dolls look like your friends, you’ll get some appreciative remarks. And possibly a future career in cake making.)
