Hi everyone, tonight I'm making a cake for my boyfriend before he goes off to uni to study English Lit and the plan is to do two books, one on top of the other. I've already got the colours sorted (brown and maroon so they look older and more traditional) but basically any tips would be greatly appreciated :) I'm also going to paint fondant letters gold using luster dust and place these down the spines, yet I'm not entirely sure how to make the spines/binding look like a book, rather than a rectangle covered in fondant :L

Cut your cake to the thickness of your desired book.  Cover the top edge, Right hand side edge and bottom edge with light colored fondant (page color) and scour heavily with a tool to simulate pages. This can then be dusted to make shadows and accentuate the scouring to look more life like.  Roll out fondant to a large rectangle just barely larger than the front, side and back of the cake with the already applied pages and cover the rest of your cake.

Hope this makes sense.  Get a book out and study it to help as you go along.

Thank you! :) I hadn't even considered dusting the pages