Week 2, our first cake! Mostly star techniques used..
Here I am making a house warming present for Karen C. Don't I look official?
Dad's Results
My results. Clearly my wording needs lots of work....I forgot my camera the third week. We did lettering, swirl flowers, star flowers, vines, leaves, shells, hearts and clowns. I got the shells down pretty well but my hearts still need some work. Dad was a big fan of the clowns. He used one on his final project in week four.
Dad's icing strategy is clearly "More is More". His writing isn't too bad. His spelling and humor on the other hand....The fourth week we worked with all stiff icing to make roses. I was encouraged by Martha's comment that they are a skill quickly developed with good results. Our icing was not the right consistency though so my ramp-up was slower than I'd like. When we finally got the right stuff in the bag things went better.
Mom and Mike's birthday was the night of our final class so I made a HB cake. Clearly my writing skills still aren't' there....
There's another class, Course 2, that starts next Saturday and covers basket weaving, royal icing (like for gingerbread houses), and a plethora of other flowers. I have friends coming in that weekend (YAHOO!) and Jenna and I are starting Jazzercise (a Groupon buy) that morning so my cake decorating pursuit is on hold for at least 3 more months....
.
I do have what I hope is a great idea in mind for Nicole's Valentine's Day party though!
6 comments:
That's awesome! (and those flowers look great!)
My handwriting sucks too - it sucks on paper and only gets worse in icing.
In school, my instructor gave me tutorials in icing writing every day when I took a pastry class. I keep some of those tricks in mind for some stuff, but I'm still not good - I want to take cake decorating classes!!! Jamie R. took them thru Michael's, too, and now it seems like she does professional-looking cakes for all her friends!
Wanna send some of your work out here? Wanna make me a wedding cake? :D
Oh yea - how do those work: do you make the cakes and icings, or is everything supplied and you just work on technique (I think it's very important to make the icing, though....). What was the icing you used (or made)?
Great roses! Looks like a lot of fun :)
We had to buy a Wilton course box that included 7 tips, 2 disposable bags, 1 "real" bag, a rose nail, instruction manual, practice board and spatula.
We had to bring in our own icing and cakes/cupcakes each week. We (Dad, my aunt, and I) shared icing which we made from scratch each week.
The stiff we made was TOO stiff though and then when i thinned it with vanilla it was too thing and the roses didn't hold their shape so well. I ended up using our teachers store-bought wilton icing which was the right consistancy for what i needed.
I need to buy tip 367 (i think that's right) for leaves though as it worked much better than the tip that came with my kit.
We teased Greg that we'd make his cake for him (9-10-11) and they agreed that we could do a shower cake (hard to refuse if you're hosting the shower). :) Offer for a shower cake is very open to you too! not sure i'll ever be wedding cake good enough but your joke made me smile.
aww, thanks Karen. :) No showers for me though (ok, we had a surprise one last July with some family).
So the classes are all buttercream? Any fondant work, or is that one of the latter classes (for the record, I hate fondant. Even the stuff that tastes "good" is nothing compared to the deliciousness of buttercreams).
That's a lot of prep you have to do each week! Do they give you recipes to start?
I have a yummy buttercream recipe, but I haven't tested it with flower decorating. I do have one I tested with flower decorating, but I like the other one (only b/c it's easier to make, not b/c it's any better otherwise).
Nicole is having a Valentine's Day party? Wow, I don't think I ever had one of those as a kid! I think the cakes look fantastic!
Is that your dad? He looks so YOUNG!
Post a Comment