Cake 101, Class #2

For those of you who doubted the ugliness of the cake I took to class this week, I took this picture.

Un-freaking-believable, isn't it? And the worst part was? It didn't even taste good. Nope. Why? Because, for one thing... the icing was terrible. It seems that I am unable to measure butter flavoring in its proper dosage. I, for some unknown reason, thought that the recipe was calling for a teaspoon of vanilla AND a teaspoon of butter flavoring. (For the record, it was an "either/or" recommendation. Oops.) Turns out that I had movie theater butter popcorn with just a hint of vanilla flavored icing. Uhm... not a treat. But since the bottom layer of the cake was burnt (Mom cooked the bottom layer - and I'm not judging when I tell you that... I'd asked her to bake the cake, but forgot to tell her that my oven cooks hot... it was so not her fault), I figured that a burnt cake didn't need yummy icing. So, rather than pitch the burnt offering and the butter flavored buttercream, I did just stacked and iced them. And, let me tell you... when I got to class and saw the beautiful, even, white creaminess that was the cute & perky blonde girl's cake... I wanted to crawl under the cake decorating table and die.

To recap: this is my HIDEOUS cake, stuck on a piece of cardboard that I cut out of a box that I had in my closet that I covered in tin foil. Laid out there on my nasty old towel, surrounded by frosting in ziploc baggies and my other supplies strewn from here to kingdom come. Oh, and... uh, yeah... that's my Taco Bell cup, too. Classy.
And this is The Beautiful Blonde's beautiful cake. Check it, creamy white icing with nary a crumb to be seen, atop a lovely cardboard cake holder that I'm sure she paid good money for. What you can't see is the pristine AJ's cake carrying box she brought The Circular White Beauty in - what you can see are her lovely plastic containers full of extra icing, beautifully and aesthetically arranged. (And the real kicker? She is as lovely as her cake. In every way. She's gorgeous, but she's funny and nice and... one of those women you want to think doesn't exist, but she does. Ugh.)

This week we learned how to work with the different consistencies. We did wrote with the thin icing (with a little piping gel mixed in). I was in love with the letters. Clearly, as I not only traced over the sample letters, but also wrote "congratulations", "ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho", and "Laurie" along the borders. I'm telling you, I get absolutely giddy when I get to write with icing!

We learned (in theory) how to make frosting roses. This is Christian with her FIRST TRY EVER. (She's kicking my butt in this class.)This is me (HA!) with my first try ever. (Note the lack of all capped excitement.) Yeah, I had a hard time even getting the rose center to come out right. This was, amazingly & sadly, my 4th try.

AND we got up close & personal with the star tip. Here are some of the other girls' cakes.

This is Christian's super cute (and SUPER DELICIOUS) little number...

This is the Holy Moses, That's A LOT of Star Tips Cake (I can't believe it... she spent about an hour doing this)!

This is the circle cake you saw before, finished. It was pretty as a picture. Even prettier, actually. (She copied a cake out of the book - AND - I liked hers better than the sample pic. I'm telling you, it was a thing of beauty.)

And this little lovely... this is mine. Please note the purple & green loopies around the edge. I couldn't think of a thing to WRITE on the cake, but I was so enamored of the thin icing that I felt the need to get down with it and do some squiggles. The flower in the middle? Uhm, yeah... totally free-hand (which is why it was off-center, HILARIOUS, but I "saved it" with the stem & leaves). Since the bottom layer was an inch smaller than the top layer (don't ask, I'm not sure how it happened, since they were baked in the same exact pan), I went around the bottom TWICE to fill in the gaps. And then went a little nuts with the stars on the sides, so as to hide the chocolate-chip effect that I got from the crumbies in my white icing.

All in all, it was a SUPERBLY fun time had by all. Seriously, this class is the most fun ever! Color me Betty Crocker, I'm a cake decorator! (Cakewrecks, here I come...)