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Merry Christmas to you all.

A colleague from work and I have volunteered to offer our services at a solidarity aution for this Christmas company dinner. Our lot to this auction consisted in making a birthday cake for the person who offered more money, this money will go to this year´s elected NGO. The thing is that the Managing Director bid 1,200Eur for our lot. Her birthday is in September and my colleague and me have until that date to train and do something more or less showy and a little bit :) worth of that sum because the cake will be eaten by the rest of the employees.

I have Rose Levy´s Beranbaum´s "The Cake Bible", Claudia Fleming´s "The Last Course, the desserts fo Gramercy Tavern", "Chez Panisse Desserts", David Lebovitz´s "Room for Dessert", Maidas Heatter´s "book of Great Desserts" and little knowledge or practice since I mainly use to cook savory things.

At Chowhound I read a bit about a book that seemed interesting with what we want to do "The Whimsical Bakehouse: Fun-to-make Cakes that taste as good as they look" by Kaye and Liv Hansen.

I was thinking in making one of those cakes with a funny decoration (fondants and all), but at the same time we would like it to taste good. Any tips for books, cake recommendations, technique books, etc would be highly appreciated.

It depends if you are going for appearance above flavor. The best tasting cake I have ever made (for chocoholics like me) was Carrement chocolate, the fancy cake by Dorie Greenspan. The recipe is available online so you don't need to own the book. It looks impressive too though not fondants and fancy decoration.

I do own the Whimsical Bakehouse though I have only ever made one cake from it, for my daughter's birthday when she was a young teen. It was covered in multi-colored polka dots. It was a lot of work though it did look impressive. I don't remember being overly impressed by the taste though I don't like fondant so that could be the reason.

Thank you very much <3, I am definitively going to try that Dorie Greenspan´s recipe, but for me XD, but for this case I think I will maybe sacrifice a little on flavour and do something on the appearance. Let´s see what I can do, although I am doubting now, that Dorie Greenspan´s cake looks imposing too, very much like Oriol Balaguer´s chocolate cake of 8 textures.

I have just bought Dorie Greenspan´s book, I think it might be really interesting.

It is a lovely book, my favorite for desserts. Dorie's recipes all work and her special occasion desserts are spectacular. You will see there are a lot of Notes for the book - mainly from Zosia who seems to be cooking her way through the book.

Wonderful, thank you very much indeed, I read a bit awhile ago about her, I was tempted to buy one of her books, but I thought oh well, you usually cook savory things and you have enough books in the sweet department, but from reading her recipe about the cake you suggested I think she is a must have. I am eager now to receive her book. If my colleague and me don´t do an appearance thing, I think we definitively should go for Dorie´s Chocolate cake.