Ice Cream cake book cover

I think you are right with the text on top, and honestly I think it is much stronger without the background colour like in your last example. Baking Magic actually works even if it isn't as crisp as the other ones. It's still totally readable as a thumbnail. But if you want to make it a tiny bit more readable put a very small drop shadow around the letters over the white. But keep the rest of the letters as is.

1,2 & 7 in your latest post all work for me. I think the mouth watering image is more important than anything else.

I think your titles alone tie the series and I'm not sure you need the covers to match in other ways.

Is that an image of an actual recipe? If it isn't and I bought it, I would be seriously disillusioned with the book.

It doesn't scream ice cream to me either; it says average chocolate cake.

Personally I like 6 & 7, wording seems to 'pop' more, but everyone is different

side note: In case you haven't checked it out: https://pixabay.com/ is a free stock image site. They have 51 pages related to "cake".

I have to agree with Caffey. Its really important to have the images be of the recipe within thebook. If they are just stock photos, thenI won’t trust that you know what you are talking about. After all, if the recipes can’t be made tohave pretty pictures, then why would they taste good?

I would suggest looking for a professional photographer whocan give you print ready images. Or youneed to find a photo editor that can take your images and really make themshine. Plus, you need to remember thatfor print (assuming this is going to be printed) would need certainspecifications and requirements for print as well as ink densities. If its an ebook, there are still photorequirements you want to make sure you have, because blurry food pictures won’twork well either…