Cake 202, Class #4

Wowza... it's SATURDAY and I'm just now getting around to posting pics of the cakes from Thursday night's class. I'm telling you, the last few days have been wild at work! (Thank heaven for a lot of hard work (read: manual labor) given by my co-workers yesterday (you know I had a reason to be in the other building when it came down to literally lifting and bagging 100 boxes full of files ). If they hadn't hauled butt getting those boxes ready for the Brinks truck, we'd all be in the office again this morning. And then I wouldn't be able to post this until TONIGHT. Egads! ...Like I said, thank heaven for them and their hard work that I can be home now at 10:00 am, getting this online. I know you've all bee oh-so-eagerly awaiting these.)


Okay, so... this week we did the grand finale cake (yeah, I'm not even kidding, that's what the COURSE calls this cake). As you've seen, we've spent the last two weeks learning how to do various royal icing flowers. This week we learned the basket weave technique. The idea was to make an oval shaped "basket" cake, and then to place the flowers on the cake, trailing down the side. For example, this is the cover of the Course II book, showing their idea of the finale:
Yeah, I know. It seems impossible, right? But, it isn't impossible. It's actually ... pretty easy. I (of course) took pics as I went, so I could document the process for you. First things first (and the one step I don't have photographic evidence of), you mark the cake where you're gonna make the basket lines. It was really easy, we just made indentations in the icing with the spatula, marking 32 lines evenly along the outside of the cake. (There's a diagram in the book, but I went with free-hand marking it in half, and then half again, and then half again). Once the lines were made, you make straight lines up the cake from the bottom to the top.

Then you proceed to "weave" the icing over/under the lines. (Yeah, it's not actually woven - nor does the icing actually go over/under. It's a total fake out, you just alternate by doing one level of icing over the center line, and then the next line breaking at that center line and going over the next.) Like so:

This is the finished product. EASY-PEASY, I'm telling you! It took maybe half an hour to do the weave. MAYBE. And it looks hard. Seriously, who knew that cake decorating was so easy?

Now, to add the flowers. (And again, I'm sorry, I didn't think to take a pic of this.) You dump a boatload (maybe half a cup) of icing out of your bag onto the top of the cake, so you have a pile of frosting... and then you randomly stick flowers into it. (And when I say "randomly stick flowers"... I mean randomly.) Here's a shot of the top of my cake:Deciding how/where to put the flowers was giving me a headache (okay, who's kidding who? I had one to start with...), so I opted not to trail the flowers down the side of the cake. This is the side angle of my finished product. (And yes, there is Dr. Pepper in that Arby's cup you can see in the top right corner of the pic.)

Ooh, and before I forget, here is Tiffany's (aka: Perfect Girl's) cake. I wish I had a close-up of her basket weave. As much as I've love to say that her icing was softer, and that's why her weave was nearly flawless (and not that she's just flat out stronger than I am, and her grip is better), well... we all know the truth (I am a weakling and cannot even squeeze a frosting bag very hard). Oh well... so what if she's a little bit of perfection? (All the friggin time.) She's still nice... and her cake was BEAUTIFUL!

And speaking of BEAUTIFUL cakes, you HAVE to check out Christian's. All of the examples we'd seen were springy cakes (ala my "baby shower" cake... and no, I didn't actually make it for anyone's baby shower... it just looked like that was its plan in life). As this was the first week of Fall, Christian wanted to do something Fall-ish (even the cake itself was fall themed, and I'm telling you ... it was a-freakin-mazing! ... spice cake with maple/cinnamon icing ... I was literally dipping my finger in to her frosting bowl all night long ... that icing was soooo good, I could not get enough of it!) Also, she went with the star tip rather than the basket tip. It had much the same effect, but because the star lets more icing out at a time, she had a different texture in her weave. It was bigger and bubblier (and there was more icing on the cake, which is always a good end result, if you ask me). Also, she did the color flow pumpkins - totally thought of it on her own. She's a creative genius. Check it:

And, as I'm sure you noticed, she did trail her flowers down the side. Wasn't it AMAZING?! The colors were freaking awesome... the colors, and the shapes, were so perfect! Here's a close-up, so you can better see the design/texture of her flowers. Oh. My. Freaking. Gosh. BEAUTIFUL!!!

Christine, sadly, erm.... forgot her cake at home the morning of class (we bring our cakes/supplies to work on Thursdays and then go straight to Michael's after work), so she didn't have anything to deliver. She's gonna do hers over the weekend, and then I'll post it for the world to see, too.

Ooh, but while I'm thinking... I think I will do a little show & tell that my cousin Becca told me about. (She's taking the same classes in Utah that I'm taking here in AZ, how awesome is that?) She gave me a helpful hint about making roses that I've been meaning to pass on. The book tells you to make a column/cone of icing for the center of your rose, then attach leaves as you go around. Said column should be roughly the size/diameter of a Hershey's kiss. Becca's helpful hint: just use a Hershey's kiss for your center (that way, you don't have to worry about the cone being too soft, not the right size... not meeting your quota of chocolate for the day). Please allow me to show you. It's pretty awesome. You start with the kiss. "Glue" it to a piece of parchment/wax paper with some icing:

Then take your icing around the tip of the kiss (to cover the chocolate and form the center of the rose):

Add petals in rows down. The royal rose is, I think, 7 layers of petals from the top - and the butter cream rose is 5. (Again, I think. We all know that I never follow the rules, and if you'll recall, my roses are prone to look more like hydrangeas than roses, anyway.)

The kiss is pretty cool - you can use it for either a royal icing or butter cream rose. My only suggestion would be to buy those random specialty kisses (like the strawberries & cream, or peppermint that you can get at Christmas), so you're trying to cover white chocolate instead of brown chocolate. If the rose isn't tight enough, you can see the brown chocolate coming through, and I think that white would be less noticeable. (OR I could squeeze the bag harder and make a tighter rose... Always a nice thought, but we all know that it's never gonna happen.)

Anyhoo... that's the update on cake class this week. Sorry that it was so late in coming, for those of you who I know have been looking for it (that would be you, Cousins Julie & Becca). Also, just an fyi: I know that I've talked before about there being 4 courses, and how we intended to take all 4 of them. ... While we do intend to take all 4, we're .... well .... a little bit sick & tired of making cakes every single blasted week of our lives, so we're taking at least a month off. So, no cake class posts for the month of October. As a substitute, you can look forward to posts regarding my upcoming birthday celebration, as well as exotic vacation destination teasers. Don't worry, I'm not falling off the edge of the blogging world. I'm just freeing up my Thursday nights for a bit. (And who could blame me, now that The Office is back?) Look forward to seeing a posting of Christine's cake in the next few days... You know that I do love to play show & tell with everyone's cakes. (to be read in a sing-songy voice) Thanks again for checking my blog (and the cakes) out. You know we love you... (Yeah, I did just share ownership of loving you with my cake... like it's a proper noun... CLEARLY, I need a break from cake class. It's gone to my head...) But really, thank you. And, as always, comments (and compliments) are welcomed (and graciously accepted).

Cake 202, Class #3

Tonight was more of the same... Flowers, flowers, flowers. (Royal icing. My new best friend/worst enemy, depending on the tip I'm using.) We've been learning all of these flowers so we can do our Course 2 finale cake next week. Christian and I were the only two at class tonight, and alas, I was too busy making (and taking pics of) my own flowers, that I didn't get any pictures of hers. She, of course, did a fantastic job. She is able to hold the bag in the correct position (something I always seem to struggle with), so her petals always come out better than mine. That having been said... here are some shots of what I was able to get done tonight.

This is my lamo attempt at making daisies. Yeah, when I found out we were doing daises, my first comment was "daisies are the friendliest flowers". Uhm, it turns out that while that might be the case for actual daisies, these buggers were definitely not the friendliest to make. Seriously, those petals were RIDICULOUSLY HARD. And, yeah, I know... they still look dumb. Oh, well. (And I threw away the truly ugly ones, so don't even start with me.)

This is my pansy. And while I know that it doesn't look like an actual pansy, I'm still pretty proud. (I know. I shouldn't be prideful, but I am. I can't help it. Isn't it cute?)

And... the primrose. (Yeah, I know. It looks suspiciously like the apple blossom from last week. Must be why I liked it so much... It was VERY EASY to make, which I'm always a fan of.)

And... the daffodil. I am, of course, crushed that this looks so dorky. I am a BIG FAN of daffodils, and had been so excited about learning how to make them. It turns out that it's nearly impossible for me to get the petals the right size/shape.

Here's the recap of all...

Aren't they cute, all nestled up in their flower trays? I am in love with these curvy white trays. Even when I make flowers that don't look like, erm... flowers... if I put them in these trays, the edges turn up and the petals look perky. Wahoo!

Stay tuned for next week's finale cake. We'll be learning the basket weave with buttercream and will be topping the cakes with the flowers we made this week and last. Should be quite a show. :)

Cake 202, Class #2

So, tonight was week 2 of course 2. Royal icing flowers and color flow... Good times. The reason I signed up for this series of classes is so I could learn how to make the royal icing flowers. I'm not even kidding... Christian took it because she wants to learn how to do fondant, and Christine took it to be a good sport and hang out with us... I took it for the flowers. I'm a girly girl, what can I say? Tonight we learned how to do the violet and the apple blossom, as well as the base leaf for both of those flowers. The other girls learned color flow. I, frankly, had enough going on in my day today that when it came to deciding between whether to do (or not to do) the color flow bird, I was all for skipping it. Which is just as well, since if I had done it, I'm pretty sure that Christine's little blue bird would have kicked my little bird's butt, and that wouldn't have been fun for anyone. Check this out... it's a really cool process, you pretty much trace the lines of a picture (think: coloring book) with the royal icing, and then fill it in with the color. At least, that's what it looked like. It looked HARD, but very cool.

And here are some samples of my flowers for this week. They're not much to look at, I know, but in a dark corner on a late shift... they'll do, I suppose.

They're a little cuter when you look at them up close. Kinda. Sorta.

I had, uhm, A TON AND A HALF (or at the very least, 3 cups) of royal icing left after class, and it's supposed to last for 2-3 days. I'm hoping to get in some more practice over the weekend to see if I can't get my violets to uhm... look like violets. Putting the flower base below the flower somehow helps it, I think. Here is the "violet". (Yeah, I had to put quotation marks around that word, since they don't really look like violets, but whatever.)

And here's my little apple blossom friend. Strangley, it's much cuter in person than it is in this super-duper close up photo. (Awh, well... who knew that royal icing flowers carried the photogenic/non-photogenic gene?)

Ooh, and check out these sweet plastic forms. You make the flowers on these tiny little pieces of wax paper and then you can put them in these plastic forms to set up and it helps the petals turn up a bit. You know, like a flower. Pretty sweet, huh?

Next week is the pansy (be still my beating heart... I'm so excited about that one that I almost peed myself (and those of you who know me, know that I'm not kidding when I say that) at the prospect). There's also a royal icing rose, and a daffodil. And who knows what else? Oh my gosh, I love this class!

Cake 202, Class #1

Tonight was our first foray into making flowers. (Okay, not the very first. Ya'll did see my... erm... "roses" from last week.) Wilton Course 2 is all about making the super cool/very pretty royal icing flowers. We used buttercream this week and did a refresher course on the strokes we learned in the last class, as well as branching out and learning how to do rosebuds and mums. And I know, I know, you're thinking... "Rosebuds are in Course 2, when they learned how to the whole rose in Course 1? What's up with that? Wouldn't the whole rose be harder?" And the answer to that question would be "No. No, rosebuds are much harder than the actual rose." Case in point. This is a shot of the lovely practice board. We use this to learn new strokes. As you can see, there are some lovely little pink & yellow rosebuds going on here on the page that I cut out of the manual.

And as this is only a two stroke flower, you'd think it'd be cake. Uhm... No. Here is a sample of my rosebuds. And mind you, this is probably my 5th or 6th practice board full of them. They kicked my trash! Much like parallel parking eluded me back in the day and my instructor ended up advising me to never try it on my own... I just surrendered the icing tip and moved on.

After "learning" (I call it that loosely, as I didn't learn much... just practiced a lot and then gave up) the rosebud, we moved on to the mums. Now, when I think "mums" I think "horrid-white-flower-corsages-that-we-were-peer-pressured-to-get-our-Moms-during-Homecoming-week-when-I-was-in-high-school", but I'm telling you... these little guys were SO fun to make, and they looked freakin awesome when they were finished. I'm gonna go ahead and give you a step-by-step picture show so you can see how they're done. I'm telling you, I'm totally PSYCHED for class next week. This little mum is only a hint of what's to come with the royal icing. I'm giddy at the mere thought of making loads o' flowers. Anyhoo... back to the mum tutorial. Check it. There is a graph/grid of different flower patterns in our manual. The paper that's taped to the nail is a copy of what's in the book, then you use icing or gum (not chewing gum... craft gum, lest you all think I'm a sick pig) to stick a piece of wax paper on top of the pattern. Like so...

Then you use one of the circle tips (I think it was #5) and fill in that middle circle. Easy-peasy.

Then you get the smiley-faced tip (#16? I can't remember for sure, and am too lazy to get up and walk the 20 feet to the kitchen to look) and you do these little petals out through the parameter of the first circle, pulling up on the end to give them kind of a bushy look.

Then you go up to the next level, into the center, and offset petals in the cracks of the first row of petals. Sweet! It's starting to look like a flower!

And then if it looks like you have room, do another row... or just fill it in with 2-3 petals and call it good.

How awesome is that? And SO EASY! ... I got addicted. I made them until... well, until I thought that my veins were gonna pop right out of my wrist. (They're easy, and they're fun, but I'm using muscles... and pumping blood through veins/arteries... that have long lain dormant. I'm telling you, my wrist was KILLING me tonight. Enter the cake class teacher's single doctor son to fix my carpal tunnel right up... I wish.) Anyway, here's a pic of my mums all gathered together. SUPER CUTE!

As for decorating the actual cake... this week was a toughie. We practiced rosebuds and the mum, and then had about 30 minutes to actually decorate our cakes. Of course, I am not gonna disappoint... I will post EVERYONE'S cakes. As you'll see, we all kind of went rogue this week. Totally different designs on each cake. I so love all the individuality we've got going in our cake class!

This is mine. There are my mums, mixed in with the drop flowers that I LOVED from last month's class. I had a bit of an issue with colors bleeding and cake crumbs on the top of my cake... so I went ahead and got all gaudy with the green. I figured that more color would camouflage my boo-boos. Plus, I'm a BIG FAN of color, so I'm always gonna err on the side of "too much going on up there".

This is Christian's. Aren't her red rosebuds BEAUTIFUL? Seriously, she did such an awesome job. You'd think that by sitting by her, some of her rosebudding abilities might come my way... but no, it turns out that cake decorating skills aren't contagious. SHOOT!

This is Tiff & Raina's (the mom & daughter team). This week they decided to only bring one cake, and ice it together. They always do such a good job. Aren't Tiffany's borders so cool? (As a side note, my cousin Becca is also taking these courses and she sent me pics of her Course 1 finale cake. She did the same super cool dots-in-the-shells border. Seriously, I'm surrounded by genius. It just never hits me!) LOVE-LOVE-LOVE the borders!

And... Christine's. Isn't this pretty? I love the bouquet. LOVE IT! And dang her, if she didn't get another perfect bow! (I left bows behind last class... right about the same place I left off with rosebuds this week. I'm so screwed when it comes to that tip. It KILLS me!)

Anyhoo... that's the scoop on cake class this week. We won't be doing another actual cake until the last class of this course. We're working on flowers only next week and the week after. I'm pretty stoked... I have my fingers (and toes, and arms, legs & eyes) crossed that it's not gonna get any harder than the rosebud already was. I am seriously doubting that it's gonna get easier (and/or that all of that crossing myself will work) but heck... Wish me luck!

Cake 101, Class #4

So... tonight was the last class in the series for Wilton Course 1. It was a busy night, let me tell you. We learned the full Wilton Rose (yeah, it deserves caps, I'm pretty sure it's a proper noun) and how to make bows and leafs. (And before you start with me on how those three things don't sound like they'd really take all that long to learn, let me tell you - THEY DO!) I'm telling you, that blasted bow was killing me. And the leaves were pretty bad, too. The roses, well... let's just say that it's a good thing that I'm not a perfectionist. The worst news about class tonight is that I was so busy making all the roses for my own cake that I totally spaced the time and didn't get pics of everyone else's masterpieces. By the time I was done with my little cake and had picked up the camera, both Raina and Angela had their cakes in the carrying case and were headed out the door. It's really tragic that I didn't get pics of theirs, because both of them did a total slam dunk awesome job. The good news is that I did get pics of T, C & C's cakes. Please allow me to share their finished products with you.

This little guy is Tiff's. I thought that the stars amongst the roses was pretty cool. I would have never thought of that, but I liked the texture that they added.

This is Christine's. Please note the bow. She's a friggin genius that she can make a bow look so easy. (I'm telling you people, it looks easy... IT IS NOT EASY.)

And this is the top of Christian's. Again, I was so fetching busy with my 13 (yes, count them, 13) roses that I totally lost track of time and missed all the good photo ops. The border around the edge of Christian's cake was the same teal/burgundy that she did her roses out of, and it was totally awesome. I'm sorry to say that by the time I had the camera out to take a shot, she'd already put the cake in the carrier, so the top shot is all you get.

And by now, I'm sure (I like to flatter myself, as we all know) that you're DYING to see my own little lovely. But first, I have to tell you - I had a vision of what I wanted my cake to look like this week. I wanted to do a tiered number, with an 8 inch on the bottom and a 6 inch on top, with roses (purple roses, actually) all around the top of the 8" tier and then covering the top of the 6" top. Uhm, that plan was shot plum out of the water when I realized that my 8" pan is actually a 9" pan... and is actually closer to 10" than 9", thanks to the weird lip on the pan. (Yeah, I have no idea how I don't even know what cake pans I have until I go to use them. Someone should just shoot me in the head (or maybe just buy me an 8 inch round), I swear.) Of course, because necessity is the mother of invention (or rather, because I'm too dang cheap to go and buy an 8" round when I have a perfectly good, albeit weird sized, set) - I ran with the funky 9 1/2" pan and the 6 incher. Sadly, once I got it put together and frosted, it looked more like a hat. Like, circa 1930's hat. Or maybe the purple ladies hats... you know what I'm talking about. Oh geez. (And yup, as always, there's my Cherry Coke cup there in the shot. Me + caffeine = creative genuis. Or maybe it = distracted woman manned with decorator's tips... Either way, there's my Coke cup. And my funky hat/cake.)

But don't you worry, I still went to class fully intending on making enough flowers to cover the now 11 inch (thanks to the icing, it grew an inch) bottom layer. Thus... the 13 roses. These are pretty much lined up in the order in which they were made. As you can see... it... uh... took me some time to get good. (Check out #3 from the left, this is what I'm lovingly referring to as my hydrangea. Hey... it's in the flower family, okay?) And then as soon as I got good (by about #4), my icing got warm and squooshy and... I got bad again (case in point, #5). But, like I said, it's just a good thing that I'm not a perfectionist... and I just kept going. I whipped through every blasted spot of what-I'm-loosely-calling-purple icing that I had and ended up with 13 roses. 10 for the outside rim and 3 for the top. (Okay, 12 roses and 1 hydrangea. But still.)

After I got the roses on, I TOTALLY FAKED some leaves (it's a really fun tip, the texture is totally awesome... but it's killer to get those suckers to come to a point) - I found that if I drug the end of the leaves out a bit over the edge of the cake they looked more leaf-ish and less, uhm... weird-blob-of-green-ish. But that still wasn't enough color for a colorful chick like me, so... I added the yellow border around the bottom and at the top. All in all... I'm pretty happy with the end result. It isn't my total dream come true (so much for the idea that I could see the future... because this cake is so not the vision that I'd had earlier this week), but I've found that as I've been able to let go of the perfectionism thing and just have fun... the cakes turn out pretty, even when they don't turn out they way I'd planned them to. (And if I wasn't so determined to just start posting pics right about now, I think I could probably turn that last bit into a life lesson and wax all profound. Lucky for us all, it's time to show some cake and you're all spared my Thursday night philosophy lecture. Woohoo!)

And because I'll all kinds of proud of this sucker, here's a pic from another angle...

And yet another of just the top. (Yeah, that's Hydrangea up there amongst the roses. I figured since she was the biggest flower of the bunch, she should have prime seating.)

If I wasn't heading right into Wilton Course 2 next Thursday, I'm pretty sure I'd be weeping bitter tears of sadness that it's over right now. But... I am heading right back into class next week, and so I can cope. Next week we'll be starting on the royal icing (flowers, flowers and more flowers... that I can keep in a tupperware in the pantry for WEEKS - it's my own personal version of Heaven, I'm telling you). Of course I'll be keeping you posted. And sharing pics. You know me...

Cake 101, Class #3

Hello again, curious blog readers. It's time for another report on how my cake decorating is coming along. And don't you worry your pretty (and/or handsome) little heads, this is gonna be another post chock full of pictures. (Yeehaw!) So, tonight we were supposed to experiment with the thick icing and learn how to make roses & clowns. Uh, yeah, please note the italics used in the previous sentence. We did not learn step 2 of the rose, nor did any of us opt for the clown cake. Our teacher, Ilene, did make this clown, though.

And as cool/easy as she did make it look, none of the rest of the class (myself included) opted for trying to repeat the experience. Mind you, Christine, Christian and I had planned on doing clowns (mostly because we thought we had to), and so we went into class with the "teamwork" mentality. Since we'd thought we were clown-bound, we'd decided pre-class that we'd each do a primary color with our icing and then we'd share bags (and thus all three of us would have a super cute multi-colored clown). But then, uhm... we decided not to do a clown, and so we were each kind of stuck with only one color of icing. Oops. (Lucky me, though, because I chose red. We all know that I'm a big fan of red, so it turned out well for me.)

And since this post is (as they pretty much all are), all about me... please allow me to show you a close up of the top of my cake. Look at all those red flowers. They make me absolutely giddy! (And I just learned how to make them tonight... I'm in love with this tip!)

But now I'll move on to the rest of the class... Angela (of Starred Cake Fame) was the only other girl to bring an actual cake (the other four ladies brought cupcakes, which looked fun and easy... but since when do I go the fun & easy route?). This is her Lovely from this week. (Seriously, I think she's gifted. She claims not to be gifted, but rather, to be a practicer of the art. So, if she's practicing throughout the week, I guess we can still be friends.) Seriously, isn't this bee-yoo-tiful?

Here's a shot of Christine showing her school spirit ("Go, Lobos, go!"). Pretty sweet blue & white cupcakes, if you do ask me. Of course, as a fellow SHS grad, I am always a fan of royal blue & white.

And here's a shot of Christian's primary colored collection of cakes. (Her "assigned" color was yellow, and then she made a bit of blue and borrowed some of my red to offset the yellow.) My favorite of hers was the yellow all-starred guy. He reminded me of a crustacean, and literally had me wanting to sing Under The Sea in class. (I held back, but only because not all of the ladies know me well enough to know that my life is a musical. Yet. Maybe I'll let them in on that little secret next week. I'll keep you posted.)

Tiffany and Raina (the mom & daughter team that were killing me with their perfection last week) are up to all kinds of cute things. Check their cupcakes... Those little creative geniuses were coming up with THE CUTEST ideas! Oh, the cherries... they were so stinkin cute! I only wish I'd walked around to the other side of the table to take their pic, rather than taking it from my side of the table. They look very upside down and not as cute as they really were. That's my bad, not Tiffany's. Oops. :(

All in all, it was a VERY FUN night. I hadn't been sure if I was up to it this week, but I'd frosted myself this little white top hat... just in case. (And yup, there's my McD's cup there in the pic along with. I'm nothing if not predictable. I've gotta have my Coke, y'know.) The good news? This week my icing wasn't as crumby. It turns out that what the teacher said is true... If you put a thin glaze on the cake while it's still warm, and let it get hard, the glaze'll hold the crumbs in and they won't get into your icing. GENIUS!

It turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. (The cake, not me so much... but I was so proud of my red flowery creation that I had to be in the pic - even if I have been sick all week, look dog-tired and am still a little swollen from the crud.) I'm a silly goose (and a bit of a camera hog), what can I say?

AAAHHHH!!! I love this class! It's the most fun EVER!