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Large & Small daisy cutter, calyx cutter

Calyx cutter, large & small daisy cutter, large circle cutter

Cake Class 3.3: Even artichokes have hearts

Last night's class was pretty simple - two flowers using the same shaped cutters and the same techniques for shaping: the mum and the daisy. 

 The daisy is nice and easy, looks like a daisy without much effort. The mum is easy but takes a while because of all of the layers. However, look at that shape. In different colors, that could be a water lily, or an artichoke. Seriously, someone's getting a cake with artichokes on it soon.

Also, I knocked out some lilies over the weekend to prepare for my final class project. Not pictured are the paper cones I made to form them when I couldn't find cone shaped paper cups anywhere.

Cake Class 3.2: Flower Power!

Happy Valentine's day if you're into that sort of thing. Last night's class was fun, because we learned how to make calla lilies, roses, and carnations. Roses and calla lilies were cool, carnations were a pain in the butt. Overall it reminded me of high school when the Peers 4 Peers would sell roses and carnations to deliver to your friends on Valentine's day. Lesson of the night: get thicker spaghetti. 

Can you see my Star Wars lunch box? 

Cake Class 3.1

Hip hip hooray, my Level 3 class wasn't cancelled! I get to play with edible Play-Doh in the middle of a craft store!

The first class was pretty low-key. We talked about the difference between gum paste and fondant (elasticity and how hard it dries). Then we made bow loops, which were ridiculously fussy. The bow loops were set aside to dry and to be assembled at home. Next we learned how to make flower bases for carnations, roses, and mums. So basically first class was just prep for the second class, but soon I will be displaying my breathtaking flower creations.

The fruits of two hours of labor.

What I did wrong

 So many things went wrong with this cake that I wasn't going to blog about it, but we should learn from our mistakes, right? The night of the Super Bowl this monstrosity happened. Let's dive in.

I promised Sheletha a turtle cake for her birthday. I was feeling lazy, so I bought a box of cake mix and a jar of caramel topping. I should have also bought a can of frosting, because I was too lazy to make buttercream to go on the cake before the fondant. Somehow I thought it would be a good idea to pour caramel on the cake instead. Fun fact: all that exposed cake you see in the picture? Yeah, the fondant didn't stick to that. All that oozing caramel running down the sides? Kept on oozing under the fondant.

Turtle cake = chocolate cake + nuts + caramel

 I wanted to take this nail polish tutorial to make a nebula design and try to recreate it on cake. I thought hey, I'll get some black fondant and do some sponge painting with frosting and it will look awesome!

Just think about how much food coloring is in that. All the food coloring, that's how much. 

 Needless to say, it did not look awesome. First, I was using makeup sponges which were much too small for my task. I should have gotten regular cleaning sponges, or even better, natural sponges. They would have given me a much better "paint" distribution instead of just smudges all over. Second, the brushes I got in my student kits...well, they suck. I need something with a finer tip and less crappy bristles to be able to paint a star that actually has points.  About the only thing that looked good was the pearl dust glitter.

That's totally what outer space looks like. Totally.

Not being one to waste food, I brought the cake to work anyway. Ugly cake still tastes good, right? That is, until your cake carrier pops open and the cake falls in the snow. -_-

Carrot for Carrie

The best excuse to make a cake is for a coworker's birthday. I get cake practice, everyone at work gets cake, and the birthday person gets to take home whatever cake is left.

Naked cake

Carrie requested a carrot cake with traditional carrot decorations. I was excited because carrot cake meant I got to use my new shredder attachment! I love my Kitchenaid so dearly, and every new attachment just makes it better.   For the filling, I used some leftover coconut frosting that had been waiting for a purpose since my birthday.        

Conspicuous lack of crumbs

I decided to forgo a crumb coat and just get the frosting on there. Lo and behold, it worked!   I put a fairly thin layer of frosting on, and I realize now that I could have gotten away with a pretty thick helping. I'm bad a spatial reasoning, which makes me bad at portioning. Oh well, no crumbs showing through!                                                                                                          

I'm pleased with the colors - vibrant but not terrifying. Carrie said that she really liked orange and green, which fit nicely with the carrot theme. I thought about practicing a few carrots to try to get them uniform, but I decided that real carrots are not uniform cones so I went crazy with carrot borders. 

My lettering is a little crooked. Lucky for me I had lots of frosting left (see above) so I'm going to get some lettering practice in this weekend.

I used the grass tip (or as I like to call it, the Muppet fur tip) for the carrot stems. It's not as clean looking as the leaf tip would have been, but I was going for authenticity! I was worried about the spacing on the carrots at first, thinking they were too far apart, but I think they would look weird if they were overlapping at all. 

Finished cake

This was a fast one - I was done in under an hour, including making the frosting. I was done so early, I even did some of the dishes instead of leaving them for tomorrow. I can't wait to bring this one in.

Maggi's Birthday

I've signed up for Level 3 of the Wilton classes, but I highly doubt it will actually happen. I'm operating under the assumption that it will be cancelled yet again, so I'm going to teach myself how to use fondant in the mean time.

My dear friend Maggi turned 25 this past week, and I decided to make her a birthday cake in an effort to get some decorating practice in. I was thinking about wedding cakes and white on white decorations and wanted to play around with that a bit. First, the cake: Lightning Cake from Joy of Cooking. I know that I am not the best at baking, but this was one seriously weird recipe. The batter was very thin, and the butter was the last thing added - you can see in the top picture it didn't get fully mixed in. The result was a flat, dense, and EXTREMELY buttery tasting cake. It's not bad, it's just weird. Experiences like this are going to drive me back to box mix! I filled the layers with strawberry pie filling. I would have loved to do fresh strawberries, but I didn't think I'd get decent quality in the middle of winter.

 Because the cake was so dense, I was able to do my best crumb coat yet. You can't get crumbs in your frosting if the cake isn't crumbly! I flavored the frosting with 3/4 t vanilla and 1/4 t almond, which came out to a very nice, mild almond flavor. I think it will go perfectly with the buttery buttery cake.





My hands were a little sticky during the decorating process, so I only have finished product photos. I rolled fondant to cover the cake and then made the fondant pearls along the bottom. My piped swags are hilariously crooked and uneven, so one of these days I'm going to have to sit at my practice board making a million swags. I had a little trouble with the roses - I couldn't get the frosting consistency right, and then I had the hardest time getting them to stick to the fondant. I ended up making a little frosting base to stick them to.
I'm proud of the monogram, piped by looking at a picture from the internet. I bet if I used ganache I could get a smoother end result for that, but it looks good for a beginner. I finished off the details with white pearl dust because I freaking love glitter.

I like how it turned out - the pearl dust gave some nice definition to the white-on-white. I'd like to practice some more with working with fondant - I can see the possibilities of having what is essentially play-doh to decorate cakes.