I was taken by a rather sweet example of a pink model kitchen, made with lots of lollies, and the swimming pool cake, with green jelly water and plastic dolls floating in soft jube rings.

It seems the art of cake decorating is very much back, although the look now is less cheerfully homemade and more sleek and professional. Canberra appears to have a booming business in cake-decoration classes, such that Jenny Williams, from CIT Solutions (the CIT's community arm), says it's difficult to keep up with demand.

CIT Solutions has another 18 courses for the rest of this year alone, each of them taking 10 people.

"It's absolutely huge," Williams says, suggesting that interest surged with the worldwide popularity of cupcakes. "We just can't do enough cake-decorating classes."

Liz Gallagher, a member of the ACT Cake Decorating Association and a tutor at CIT Solutions, says most people taking the classes are women with young families who want to start making their children's cakes, although she does get men as well.

The Lifestyle Food channel says 5400 cakes have been uploaded on its Facebook page in response to a competition this month, and in Canberra, a new cake-decorating store at Majura Park, Latorta, is running its own competition, asking people to submit their most spectacular cakes this month. Hundreds have done so, it says.

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Latorta owner Michael Fraser puts the surge in interest down to the wider interest in homemade. ''In a world of technology, it's really a wholesome and good feeling when family and friends can enjoy something you've created,'' he says.

Latorta holds weekly demonstrations, and that is where close to 20 women and their kids recently gathered on a Thursday morning to learn how to assemble an ''ombre'' petal ruffle cake. An ombre cake is one in which the colours graduate from light to dark.

I'm a beginner, here to observe, take notes and replicate the results at home. A half-finished dummy cake, an example of what we will be making, sits between me and the action. It's a tall, white cake with edible petals glued to its sides, varying from a dark purple at the bottom to violet and then white at the top. It is frankly a little intimidating.

Our demonstrators, Kata Heming and Jade Elpick, are self-depreciating and fun but also adept as they put the cake together. It takes a long time, but the result is quite pretty, really. By the time they tie a ribbon around the top, the cake looks a bit like a tea cosy. Inside there is an impressive five layers, each baked and coloured separately so they graduate from a rather startling hot pink to something closer to cooked salmon. Heming tells me that this is really an intermediate cake, rather than for beginners. Which is not good news.

The weekend rolls around and I'm in the midst of moving house, so by the time I clear enough space in my kitchen to begin the cake it's early Sunday afternoon. But as it's my old friend Charlie's birthday, I want to get it done. I set to work making a basic butter cake batter, though I opt to leave out the food colouring.

Elpick's cake was as tall as it was wide, and while the tin I use is the smallest I own, it is definitely larger than hers. I'm not sure how much batter I should make, so I just make one and a half batches and hope for the best.

I bake the first layer for 20 minutes, and when I pull it out of the oven it smells great and is a lovely golden brown. I leave it to cool in the tin, then tip it on to a plate. It's when I go to make the second layer that I realise I've used far too much of my mixture already. It is considerably thinner, and when the time comes for a third, I have barely enough batter to cover the bottom of the tin. When baked it rises a little, but is still only just thicker than a fluffy pancake.

I could make another batch and keep building the cake higher, but by this time I'm more than two hours into this and my deadline looms in the form of guests arriving for cake and wine. So with grim determination I mix butter cream while my three cakes of various sizes cool. You can't go wrong with butter and sugar, I ruminate as I slap a layer between each cake and pile them on top of each other, from biggest to smallest, then smother the whole thing in more butter cream.

Finally it's time to decorate the thing, which looks like Elpick's - in front of one of those wavy, distorting mirrors. Shorter, fatter and less pink. As advised, I have bought a small bucket of ready-made fondant to top the cake. I find fondant a bit disconcerting, mainly because while I know it is edible, its look and texture closely resembles bright white clay. But I dust the table with a bit of flour and start kneading and stretching it until it is soft and malleable. Then I use the side of a glass to roll it out, because we have not unpacked a rolling pin. Elpick and Heming had suggested buying a product called ''the mat'', a food-safe vinyl mat used for rolling fondant between, but I found the side of a glass on a table worked pretty well.

I gently lift the sheet of white off the table and lower it over my big hunk of cake and butter cream. Following Elpick and Heming's instructions, I land the centre of my sheet squarely on top of the cake, then hold my nerve as I gently lower it down the sides of the cake, smoothing it with my hands as I go.

Somehow, miraculously, the results are close to flawless. I am more than a little chuffed by this. Next stop, Adriano Zumbo's macaron tower. Or maybe not. I pause and have a cup of tea. I've been working on this steadily for longer than four hours when desperation starts to set in. Guests are arriving and I fear expectations are high.

Adding to the pressure, weeks ago I had floated among friends the idea of creating a Dolly Varden cake. They were really popular at birthday parties when

I was little. To make one, a small plastic doll was inserted into the top of an elaborately decorated cone-shaped cake, which served as her dress. Thanks to a mishearing, some of our guests are now expecting a Dolly Parton cake. If I did make one, I would emphasise the country singer's little known talents. A former housemate of mine went to one of her concerts and came home with a poster of her milking a cow while wearing a long sparkly ball gown. That would make a great cake.

But I am committed to my petals. Absolutely. I use the prescribed gel food colouring to turn a lump of fondant electric blue then roll it out with the side of my glass and start cutting petal shapes with a butter knife. My lesson here? There is some equipment you really don't need, but some you really do.

Heming and Elpick used gum paste to make their petals. They used a delicate slicing instrument to cut them out. They used a balling tool, a tiny plastic ball on the end of a stick, to make their petals rounded. Their petals were delicate, elegant, lovely.

My petals are like chunks of play dough, but I'm past caring. I am pasting the raggedy things on to the cake with water, and am suddenly relieved my cake never reached the heights of Elpick's. Less height, fewer petals. I wrap a blue ribbon around the top, then Charlie strolls in and cuts out a blue letter ''C'' for the top, and it's done.

The cake goes down well, but it doesn't look much like the original, and I decide the art of decorating is not for me. I have a friend in Melbourne who decorates the most spectacular cakes, and I know she gets a lot of joy out it. But I don't have the patience, especially since the decoration rarely adds much to the flavour. I'll stick to serving my desserts as they come, often straight out of the oven. Although if I got my hands on a copy of that birthday book I'd be tempted to try the swimming pool cake.

>>CIT Solutions runs five-week courses, each with weekly three-hour sessions. Cooking Coordinates teaches the Wilton decorating method, which originated in the United States. Regular classes teach decorating basics, making flowers, working with gum paste and fondant. Latorta runs demonstrations twice a week and starts hands-on classes next month.

Larissa Nicholson is a staff feature writer.