..those cakes are amazing. I don't think I would have the patience to make those. My MIL says we are from the "polaroid" generation, where everything has to be instant! Guess she's right!
You are so right MrsMissy! I am so spoiled to making edible images I am getting lazy!!! I made a castle cake for someone today....the cakes on that website make mine look silly!!! I will post a picture of mine soon. Anyway, thanks for the link...I enjoyed looking at all the gorgeous cakes!
traci 
Wow, aren't those spectacular! Thanks for sharing that site.
Haha, you know patience is a virtue that you get when you are older and have no sense of time, haha! You just get lost in these things and you don't really care how long they take, unless of course you have other things you need to do, like work and sleep maybe, haha!
Now those look like $1500 cakes, mainly because you could have a full team working on one for days, haha!
Hugs Squirrelly
How wierd is this...I just bought a book that must have been done by the same people-a few of the cakes are IDENTICAL! I got it for $8 at Half Price Books, and it's great (I also bought Debbie Brown's "Naughty Cakes" but I guess that's for another forum.) The wierd thing about a lot of the cakes in this book is that first they coat with apricot syrup, then coat with marzipan, THEN with fondant, paint, etc. Marzipan AND fondant? No wonder their cakes are so dang expensive! 
Ali
Ali-
That sounds like British-style decorating. I was confused by that method of decorating cakes (apricot glaze, marzipan-under-fondant etc.)when I first started reading cake decorating books until I started looking at where they were published. The British ones were definitely different from what we're used to in the U.S. My local library has a lot of British cake decorating books--it must be a big thing there.
There's starting to be more cross-over, though. Fondant is something we've taken from them, for sure.
Please bear in mind most british cakes are fruit cake which is full of alcohol and can have a very bumpy surface (even if trimmed). We put apricot glaze on to seal the fruit cake and to prevent fermentation with the marzipan. The marzipan then goes on to give us a good smooth surface on which to put our final coat. We then cover with either royal icing or fondant. without the marzipan it would be very difficult to get that pristine super smooth coat when using the royal icing. It does also give a better effect when fondant is used. We don't use marzipan if we're making a sponge cake though. In this case we just cover with a thin layer of buttercream to act as a glue for the fondant
Ah, Miss Baritone - I was hoping I would hear from you on this one. I can understand doing that with the fruit cake, but they do it with Genoese cake, too. I guess it's just better to have a really smooth surface in the end. Still, though, that's gotta cost a lot having both on there!
Also, Miss B, I know the traditional filling for a Victoria Sponge is jam & cream, but do you ever ice them completely, and will they even hold up to a thick layer of American BC and some decorations? I'm dying to try one, just don't know how durable it is.
Ali
Oh, Miss Baritone, that reminds me, I adore (my hips don't) scones and devonshire (or Clodded sp?) cream. Scones are pretty easy to get here but the devonshire cream isn't.
Anyway, could you fill a cake with devonshire cream? That sounds HEAVENLY. Now there's a calorie explosion: BUTTERCREAM and DEVONSHIRE CREAM. Yum.
Or, could you make a cake with devonshire cream? Or, could you add devonshire cream to buttercream? Oh, the possibilities, but I don't know if any of them would work.
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