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https://www.amazon.com/Maggie-Austin-Cake-Artistry-Technique/dp/0544765354 Its one of the most beautiful books I own. Its worth it just for the cake recipe, but all the decorating techniques are stunning. Great coffee table book too. It's pretty cheap for such a beautiful, well made hardcover book. It just came out, I think last month. You have to mix the cake properly though, it can come out dense if not mixed correctly... so keep trying until its nice and soft. I loved it so much I switched over to it and use it now for all my wedding cakes.

Couple of questions: How much baking experience do you have? Are you planning on starting with using frosting and then using Fondant or just making cakes with frosting?

Like you I hate overly sweet frosting. I hardly ever make the typical American Buttercream frosting (shortening, milk, & powdered sugar-Blech!) However, that frosting does tend to be a little bit easier to work with. If you have some experience with cooked sugar, an Italian or French buttercream frosting isn't as intense for sweetness. They are made with real butter so they are harder to work with because the frosting gets softer the warmer it is outside or the longer you are holding the piping bag in your hands.

If you plan to use Fondant, I will use a chocolate ganache for the filling and crumb coat because it's not as sweet depending on the type of chocolate you use.

As far as supplies, it again depends on where you want to start. But there are some items that you will use regardless of if you choose Frosting vs. Fondant. These are a couple of my favorite items.

• My favorite investment has been my rotating cake stand. I use the heavier one from Ateco that I bought on Amazon.
  
• I always use an Offset Spatula. It's perfect for spreading the frosting on top of your cakes.
  
  As far as time, it all depends on what you are making and how fancy you want it. I have spent several hours decorating a cake with fondant but that's because they had a lot of tiny details. Cakes with simple rosettes on them are a lot faster. If you don't a lot of time in a day to put several hours into baking and then decorating, you can always bake the cake days before and put it in the freezer until you are ready to decorate. I'm happy to go into more details if you want more. I just don't know how much information you really want.

Hmm, I'm stumped on the Rick Astley theme (maybe start off with music notes?), but I'm thinking for the Labyrinth tier you could use a fondant impression mat like the top one here http://www.amazon.com/FMM-Sugarcraft-Impression-Mat-Set/dp/B0036KQYA6 to make a brick wall texture. Then add some vines or branches.

For My Little Pony, you could do something like this http://thesmilingbaker.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/20120920-111852.jpg or if you want to stick to fondant, you could use the same concept but use different colored fondant strips to make the rainbow effect. Then you can easily add cut out hearts, flowers, clouds, etc.

The bottom tiered cake was a vegan chocolate cake recipe I use, even though the rest of the cake is definitely not vegan. It taste incredible, especially if you go the extra mile and get really good cocoa and coffee. Recipe here.

The top cake was just the vanilla cake version of the above recipe, sans the cocoa and coffee, but add in actual vanilla bean.
I made a white chocolate pastry creme for the bottom tiers filling and then added black cocoa powder to the leftover pastry creme and used that on the top tiered vanilla cake.

The frosting was Swiss meringue buttercream. To get that dark sky color I used a combination of royal blue and black Wilton gel food coloring and black cocoa powder from [Amazon]
(https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K89SKKK/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_iaiXDbMAHSWES). The accents were fondant and the moon was white chocolate from a mould for desserts and just dusted with silver edible shimmer.

Note: The black cocoa powder when added to any type of vanilla frosting makes it taste like oreos or cookies n creme.

Wilton 6 inch Easy Layer Pans (set of 5)

The pans are amazing!!

I agree with u/brighteyes_bc on using a boxed cake mix. Maybe you could do a basic 8x8 or 9x13 cake, frost it, and use some cookies cut in half as tombstones for a graveyard cake!

Something like this http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/12859/haunted-graveyard-cake-



You can buy little tubes of edible gel (you can even get them at Walmart) to write names/dates/etc. on the tombstones.

They look like this: http://www.amazon.com/Wilton-704-306-Black-Gel-Tube/dp/B0000A1ODW

I hope this helps!

Both the cake and the syrup should be completely cooled. I make the syrup, let it cool, then put it into a water bottle with one of these on it so it showers, but you could easily make your own with just a nail to make little holes in the lid.

Use either a brand new bench scraper or this: Ateco 1447 Decorating Comb & Icing Smoother, 4 Sided https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0000VOOXI/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_e8gaBbN63S1XN
Both are what's used in professional bakeries :)

If you had an example picture, it would help but my guess is they used an airbrush or color mist.

Hopefully others will chime in so there's more of a consensus, but this is what we use in our ovens at the bakery to confirm our oven thermometers are working properly. We leave them in most all the time.

https://www.amazon.com/CDN-POT750X-High-Heat-Thermometer/dp/B0021AEAIK

This is the base recipe I used:
http://theglitterguide.com/2013/10/08/recipe-file-champagne-cake/?crlt.pid=camp.3OPlru9mgMcK

I made the cake (2 batches) and then used a storebought jam (found here: https://www.amazon.com/Stonewall-Kitchen-Raspberry-Peach-Champagne/dp/B001RNYE4C/ref=sr_1_1_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1468977744&sr=8-1&keywords=stonewall+raspberry+champagne+jam) with a standard whipped buttercream recipe.

Buy this book.