Flower Power!

Let me begin by saying that this month has been insane. Life as a wife/mother/book keeper/volunteer/PTA mom/soccer mom/cake decorator is pretty time consuming. Due to these reasons I have been slacking on the blog posts! Today, I will show you what I have been up to in my cake class for the last three weeks.

Our first class, we worked with a gum paste and fondant mixture to make two different flowers.

First, the pansy. The pansy requires two different colors of the mixture, a fondant roller, a fondant cutter, a small and large sponge and a fondant shaping tool. It takes about 5-8 minutes per flower after the mixture has been made and colored. VERY TIME CONSUMING!! Very lifelike!

The next flower is a pressed button flower. It required the same mix of fondant and gum paste in two different colors, a flower press, fondant shaping tools, a fondant roller, and gum paste glue. It is less lifelike but very adorable. It takes about 5 minutes to make.

The next week, we began using royal icing. I am used to this type of icing from all the gingerbread houses I have made over the years. I have never used it in this way before. The first flowers are the small, delicate apple blossoms. Very sweet! They are about the same size as a penny.

The next flower was the primrose. This way my favorite up until this point. Very pretty and easier to make. They are half dollar sized.

The next week we were still using royal icing. Another dainty flower, the violet.

Daffodils were next. They are very interesting to make and smaller than I assumed they would be. They also are around the size of a half dollar.

Roses, grrrr.....These will take MUCH more practice on my part. This was my best. Very frustrating flower to make, for me.

Next are my actual favorite flower and my favorite flower to make. Lilies. They are beautiful and require little effort. I will be using these for my final cake next week.

Here is my little homemade garden. All edible, some more pretty than others. I am excited to add these to my repertoire. Hope you enjoy looking!

Course 1 Finale!

The end of course one is near.....All we need is a layer cake(Carrot with cream cheese filling).
A layer cake that has been iced...Please ignore the tiny bubbles in the frosting. It didn't set up quite right. It seems the harder I try, the more issues I face. Boo!

Premade flowers to decorate the cake... I used Shaggy Mums again. If you were curious, icing vanilla wafers is one of the most difficult things I have done. It is right up there with child birth! Nearly impossible!

Go to class and decorate..... Ta-Da!

We also learned how to make a ribbon rose in class. It is pretty difficult and something I will have to practice.

My next class starts on Wednesday. This is a flowers class using fondant and gumpaste. I am excited that I won't have to make a cake every week for this class. We shall see how it shapes up! See you next week!

Flowers

Today I attended the third class of the Wilton Basic Decorating course. The class mainly focused on flowers today. We were to bring six un-iced cupcakes to class. Braxton picked chocolate. Shocker!!


During class, we learned how to make drop flowers, swirling drop flowers, rosettes, pompom flowers, leaves, and shells. It was also interesting to see how important having the right icing consistency is. My consistency today was too dry and not creamy enough. I think I may have over mixed it as well, which did not help. This made for a very frustrating afternoon for me. While my icing still "worked", it was not the stunning creamy icing of my perfectionist dreams. I spent the class huffing and puffing and wishing I could remake the icing. There will be practicing at home this week with a better mixed icing.

The last thing we learned were these shaggy mums. They were my favorite flower of the class and I think I will be incorporating these into my end of the class "Finale Cake."

They taste even better than they look. I am looking forward to my next class and making sure my icing is creamy perfection. For now, these will have to do.

Dimensional Decorating

Today's decorating class was about dimensional decorating. For this class we were supposed to make a double batch of the Class Buttercream Icing in a stiff consistency. You can tell it is stiff by the way the spatula does not fall to the side as I jiggle the cup.
We were also told to bake a single layer of a cake. I had a little sticking in my pan, so it crumbed quite a bit. It is a yellow cake.

This is what I carried into class today, along with my purse. I felt like I was moving into Michael's. People always look at you funny when you carry that much INTO the store.

We torted our cakes and filled them with filling. My filling is blueberry, Eric's suggestion. After filling, we frosted the cake. We copied a pattern given to us by Wilton using white piping gel and then transferred our image to the top of the cake. We then practiced our dimensional decorating with a round tip. We then decorated using the new theory.

My class was running a bit behind so I only had 10 minutes to decorate my cake. I feel pretty good about it, all things considered. I would have liked to see what I could do with a bit more time. What do you think?

Next week, CUPCAKES!

Star tip

Today I am starting the next stage of my life. My half-baked dream is to open a bakery. Slowly but surely, I am going to begin taking steps towards that goal.

Last week I signed up for a cake decorating class at Michael's craft store. The class is put on by Wilton and is called "Decorating Basics." For the class we needed a kit, I decided to purchase the monster kit which includes all I will need for the three decorating classes that they offer.

Along with this kit we were also asked to bring six plain cookies to decorate.

I walked into Michael's with my arms loaded down and my hopes high. My instructors name is Emily. She happens to be the sister-in-law of a high school classmate. She is very nice and helpful. She showed us how to prepare cake pans, how to use Bake-Even Strips for perfectly level cakes, explained how to make Class Buttercream Icing and how to achieve different consistencies of icing.

We then moved into Featherweight bags. We were shown how to prep an icing bag for decorating, how to hold the bag and how to fill and ice a cake. Then, practical application was used with a star tip. We began by using our practice boards and piping icing to make a single star, then a star border and finally a star fill in. We were asked to take out the cookies we brought and use the method to ice our cookies.

One cookie didn't make it until the camera was available.

You can see the detail of the star tip below.

The first class was very basic, like my blog post. My writing may not evoke anything from you, but the pictures just might.

Next week we are to bring a cake and all sorts of filling and decorating supplies. I can't wait to see what we create next!