A: Yummy Arts Cake Making Membership

If we had to pick one single high-quality cake making course available online, this would be it. Yes, it is a membership product, which means there will be a recurring cost automatically charged to your credit card every month. But in exchange for that, you do get more cake making and decorating help than you would with any of the other products we evaluated.

This product gives you over 100 videos you can watch on demand for just about any kind of cake you want to make. Yeah, 100 videos. That’s impressive. The step-by-step instructions are very effective and come with pictures of what you cake should look like with every step. Very helpful. They even give away a video tip-of-the-week to their members and also a cake decorating forum where like-minded members can gather to discuss everything from basic cake making to running a cake decorating business.

With everything they offer for the Yummy Arts membership, you’ll definitely get the benefits of a professional cake decorating course. You’ll save time, money, and frustration as you design and produce some professional-grade cakes. And if you’re considering going into the cake decorating business some day, this product will give you a huge leg up. A+. Highly recommended for both professional and home baker alike.

B. Maddy Pearson’s Video Cake Making Course

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Nowhere is that more true than when it comes to making cakes and other exotic desserts. That’s one of the reasons we like Video Cake Making Course. British lass, Maddy Pearson, has video cake making and decorating lessons that single-step you through everything from a delicious lemon syrup cake to a ganache-frosted chocoholic’s favorite.

This product isn’t that expensive – at $29.95, it’s very affordable and gives you some good recipes that will save you both time and money. The website uses the word “membership” for this product, but rest assured, there is no recurring fee. It’s a one-time cost only. When you sign up, you’ll get 10 very good home-grown videos taking you through each step so you know what it’s supposed to look like as you go. The upside is there is no advertising kitsch that we’ve come to expect from so many online vendors. With mild-mannered Maddy, what you see is what you get, and what you get is good value for your one-time fee.

We’ll give her a B. Good product, good value. Just not quite as impressive as as Yummy Arts, but not as expensive, either.

Steer Clear: Cake Decorating Magic

The information in the product is good, but nothing you couldn’t get in one of the other products and in more and better varieties. But the real downer about this product is the questionable sales tactics on the home page.

When you arrive at the cake decorating secrets site, you’ll immediately be presented with one of those annoying pop-ins asking you to give your name and email address in exchange for a free chapter of the Cake Decorating Secrets ebook. But when you click on the “x” to get rid of the pop-in, the same pop-in comes right back! Not only is this doubly-annoying, but it borders on spammish.

But what really gives this product is the pricing. The advertised price of the ebook is $47. In order to “encourage” you to buy the product right away, they threaten to raise the price to a whopping $147 (“And yes, we plan on raising the price back up to $147 very soon.”) But if you try to click away from the page, you’ll get another annoying pop-up saying “Wait, click cancel to stay on the page for a special offer.” If you do, you’ll see that the price of Cake Decorating Secrets has miraculously dropped by 1/2!

So what was a $47 product that’s about to incrase by $100 is really only $23.50? Sounds shady to me. I’d steer clear. You can get a lot more and better information for your money without feeling like you’ve been hoodwinked on the price.