Make lifelike flowers from gumpaste and royal icing with help from this book for use on your cakes and other baked goodies, from lilies and roses to orchids. The book is small in dimension but has a lot of content. The book is concise with 20 different flowers to make as the title suggests, ranging from using specialist sugarcraft cutters to piping nozzles. There are diagrams for each step, which help visualise the instructions and make it easier to follow. In addition to making the flowers, there are display options for each flower type. The results are stunning if not a little intimidating, but by jumping straight in and practising, you can find that your results can be just as good.-Popular Crafts My first sugarcraft project was making a rose out of fondant icing, and this craft does lend itself to the fashioning of floral items. Here is a whole book of different flowers and arrangements to create out of sugar to decorate cakes, tables and more. There is a recipe for royal icing in here, short and sweet (pardon the pun) but you will need to look elsewhere for recipes for other types of frosting such as gum paste. You can buy them ready made of course, and this book gets instantly down the business of telling you exactly what you need to make the projects and then there are the projects themselves. There are twenty of these of course, each one taking up two pages. There are written instructions, a picture of the finished item attractively presented to inspire you, and best of all in my opinion a helpful page showing what the component parts look like before assembly. This takes much of the mystery out of creating these beautiful flowers, and on the same page is a small inset photograph of a completed item, but not actually presented in as full a way as in the main picture. I find this staged approach very helpful, and it is surprising how little space you need to lay out a project in this manner. Choose from the inevitable roses, simple daisies, glorious bright gerbera, cheerful daffodils, elegant orchids, buds, leaves and even a butterfly to enhance your work. Substitute the frostings for polymer clay and you extend the use of the book - one for the keeper shelf that shows how easy it really is to make very professional looking sugar flowers.-Myshelf.com

Lisa Slatter has been keen on cake decorating from a very young age. She first trained at Marlow Adult Education progressing on to the Berkshire College of Agriculture and Brooklands College where she gained her City and Guilds qualifications in Design and Sugarcraft. Lisa is also a City and Guilds qualified college tutor and an accredited demonstrator for the British Sugarcraft Guild, in which capacity she travels the country giving demonstrations, talks and workshops to clubs and organisations. At the end of 2008, Lisa opened her own School of Sugarcraft. With over twenty-one years of experience in the cake-making and sugarcraft industry, she brought a wealth of experience and expertise to her courses. She has taught both nationally and internationally and won many awards for her work. Recently, Lisa has been appointed as Deputy Head of School at the Knightsbridge PME School of Sugarcraft in South Harrow, UK. Lisa not only teaches classes here, but is actively involved in product development and training, and the training of prospective PME Diploma tutors both in the UK and internationally. Lisa contributes regularly to the monthly magazine 'Cakes & Sugarcraft', and she and her family live in Buckinghamshire, UK.

Introduction4 Materials and equipment6 Bridal Gladioli8 Spring Blossom 10 Viola12 Daisy 14 Hydrangea 16 Gerbera 18 Open Rose 20 Daffodil 22 Fantasy Floral Cupcake 24 Blossoms and Buds 26 Lily of the Valley 28 Fantasy Flowers 30 Rose and Ivy Leaves 32 Freesia 34 Mini Orchid 36 Carnation 38 Rose 40 Orchid 42 Lily 44 Butterflies 46