Goodbye

For his goodbye cake, Chris requested a spice cake with cream cheese frosting (how appropriate for a bagel bakery). I'm trying to get away from box mixes, so I used the Velvet Spice Cake recipe from The Joy of Cooking. I've never made a cake before that involved folding in beaten egg whites. It ended up having a super moist and soft texture. I was a little worried because the recipe said to bake it in a tube or Bundt pan, but the Wilton strips helped keep the layers evenly baked.

Cakes in the oven

 No pictures of crumb coat, because I am horrible at crumb coating.  I made the frosting too thin for the crumb coat so crumbs still came through the final frosting layer.

Coloring was fun, because I was going for vibrant colors. So far I've just been taking the colors right from the jars, but I think I should start experimenting with mixing. That purple could have been just a hair redder...

I added about a teaspoon of clear piping gel to about a cup of frosting to make it nice and smooth for writing. The soft frosting was very easy to get into the bags, too.

It helps having enough spatulas for all the colors

Prepped and ready to go!

 I was going for a peacock feel with this cake.  I didn't have a solid plan except for swirls. I can do a pretty sweet swirl patter with one or two colors, but the three colors threw me for a loop and I went with little groups of swirls all over the cake. I thought the writing turned out very well. I do plan on practicing my frosting penmanship to clean things up a bit.

Swirls and text, looking good

 I decided to try a reverse shell border because it seemed to fit the swirly theme, and because I hadn't done it since the class in which I learned it. I was very pleased with how it turned out. It's a little bit easier than the regular shell border.

Completed cake

Reverse shell border

Reverse shell border

I've gotten lots of compliments since dropping the cake off at work. Overall I'm happy with the result and looking forward to making something cool for my birthday.

Fresh Start

My enthusiasm for cake decorating had waned when the Level 3 Wilton course I had signed up for was cancelled. I was annoyed that I had bought all of the supplies already, and I was in a serious cake groove after the first two classes. I looked at it as an opportunity to take a break from the obligation of making and decorating a cake every week. I thought, I'll still practice my decorating skills even if I don't bake anything.

I'm very good at deceiving myself.

Without the motivation of new material keeping me going, I all but stopped with the cakes. A visit to my sister in Portugal resulted in a respectable birthday cake, considering the circumstances.

The cake was from a box and the frosting was from a can, but the colors turned out great and I can turn out a passable rose even when the frosting is horribly horribly runny (protip: Hershey's kisses make excellent rose bases.) My rope border looked good, once I remembered how to do it. In the end, everyone was impressed and I was glad I managed to get my supplies through customs.

December came, and it was all goodies all the time. Batch after batch of cookies and candies and treats came rolling in, and I was loathe to add a cake to the stack. I thought about the fact that new classes would be starting in January, and that I already had the supplies bought, and then I thought "Oh, but it takes so much time! I'll think about it in another month."

The dual saviors of my enthusiasm were my manager and my inlaws. When my manager put in his two week's notice, I promised him a cake on his last day. Then, my boyfriend's wonderful parents got me the extra large Wilton offset spatula for Christmas. I realized that I could make a cake from scratch for someone who would understand and appreciate the effort, and I had a tool to make it faster and easier. Eagerly I searched the Joy of Cooking for a suitable recipe, and it is all I can do to not start mixing the batter right now!

This blog is to track my cake decorating progress and to show off my mad skills. I hope to submit a cake to the State Fair in 2013, and there's no time like the present to start practicing.