I also find The Cake Bible intimidating. My one attempt to bake a cake from it (three layers as a practice wedding cake) was a disaster. Of course, it might have been my mixing technique, as I was very new to cake baking at the time and did not own a stand mixer. The cake literally broke apart after I assembled it (but the pieces tasted great). I then turned to Susan Purdy's The Perfect Cake, which was also recommended by the friend of a friend who has done a number of special occasion cakes and uses it as her go-to book for "crucial cakes.". I find it friendly and encouraging, and I ended up using the Anna's Butter Cake for my wedding cake, along with a simple buttercream frosting from the Culinary Institute of America's baking book. After that practice cake turned out so poorly, I re-thought doing tiers, and using large pans, especially as I was not going to be baking from my house and in my own oven. What I did instead was use a mini-tier Wilton set that used one recipe of the cake. The plastic holders for the tiers have plastic dowels that attach to the bottom and go into the cake below. I did those tiers as double layers, and that cake went onto an elevated holder. I then baked three, three-layer cakes which I positioned on the front and on each side of the mini-tier cake. I refrigerated each cake as I finished frosting it, and the next day I transported them and assembled them on site. (I almost dropped one when assembling. Beware of how covered cake boards will slide off large metal spatulas!) I went simply on the decoration--a cake top ornament and some artificial trees from a model train store, as my husband has a particular obsession with trees. People still tell me how delicious that cake was. My stepdaughter has told me that she wants me to do her wedding cake, and she wants chocolate with white chocolate frosting. I have a few years to practice for that since she is not dating anyone right now. Fortunately there is a chocolate variation on the Anna's butter cake....

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