Cake Decorating 101

Yay for creating!! Yes Yes, I love to create. I've wanted to learn to decorate cakes for years! I never new that there were classes available until last year when my co-worker had said that she and her daughter were taking one at Michael's. So, I thought about my niece Amanda whom I thought would love to take this class also! So, this was her gift for her birthday in May of 2009. Now, do not be confused. This is NOT an old post or old pictures. We did not take the class until June 2010! It's true that I often unintentionally procrastinate, but this was not the case this time. Between my schedule, Amanda's schedule and the baby being born (followed by all the complications and the hospital stays) the first open month we both had was June of 2010, over a year later! Or so we thought. So, the first day of class we showed up to the store early to sign-up. After we paid they handed us a list of items we needed for the first class including an entire list of "things to bring from home" which included 6 cookies each! WHAT?!? Now let me tell you, I've been calling 4 different Michael's locations every month for over a year and not one of them mentioned that you would need anything for your first class. They always told me that we just needed to come into the store to sign-up. I even specifically asked, both in times past and on this occasion if I could just come early to sign-up on the day class started. And they said YES! So, WARNING you will need to bring things to your first class. Anyway, Amanda and I were frantically running around Michael's trying to buy what we needed for class. Then we were going to sprint to Wal-Mart and by the "Stuff from home" items, like scissors, tape, glue stick, wax paper, towel etc. Luckily, just as we had purchased the Michael's stuff and were headed out the door, the teacher/instructor was coming in the door. We could tell it was her by all of her cake decorating stuff and her apron. So, I stopped her and explained the situation and asked her, for time and money purposes, what were the most crucial things we needed from Wal-Mart. She looked at the list and said we could borrow all of her stuff and just use our practice board instead of cookies. PHEW! That was a great blessing for me! YES! Anyway, week 2 we had to bring our own cake. Week 3 I ended up in Utah instead of at class. The plan was to come back from Utah on Sunday ( and thus I'd be at class on Tuesday), but then things changed and we stayed in Utah through Wednesday. I'll explain all that in another post. Point here is that my mom and Amanda went that week and decorated cupcakes and learned TONS of stuff! That was a really bad week to miss. Thankfully, they both practiced the new things with me when I got home. Then week 4 we had to bring our own cakes again. Week 4 we wanted to have more time to decorate during class, rather than work on tinting icing and what not. So, we tried to get it all done at home AND be on time to class. We also wanted to improve the taste of the icing used to ice the cake so we tried a new recipe. It was tastier. However, as you can tell from our pictures, we didn't accomplish both. In fact, our efforts to be prepared backfired on us. In the end, we decided being on time was more important and thus because of the time crunch the list of problems begins...

1- our icing didn't quite get to the shades of colors we were shooting for. In fact, Amanda was actually tinting the icing in the car on our way there. And we talked about the crazy things I've done in the car on the way to something that I couldn't be late for. Like school and performances. Now, those stories are just a little scary.

2- for some reason our "stiff" icing was too stiff! So, the stiff stuff we were supposed to do didn't turn out as well as they should have because it was just too darn stiff! And it started giving us a hand ache because it was so stiff. They didn't really ever mention, that I can remember, that "stiff" could be too stiff.

3- the pudding we used to fill our cakes wasn't set-up enough so our top half kept sliding off

4- the icing we iced our cakes with was first too stiff and then ended up too thin so our icing jobs were, well...junk. Thank heavens my mom stepped in and saved them both the best she could.

5- our "thin" icing ended up too thin!

6- On our way driving there my top layer slid off and messed up the side of my cake =(

7- We tried to thin the "stiff" icing out while it was still in the bag and it just became a runny mess when we tried to use it. Then our decorations started "melting"/sliding down our cakes.

There were more, but oh well. Now, I can just look back and laugh!!!! Ha Ha HA HA HA!!! The good part is that the cake was delicious! I actually was trying out a new idea, experimenting. I used a spice cake mix with coconut pudding and some air dried coconut shavings and some other stuff to pump up the taste of a boxed cake. Inside was a vanilla pudding filling. I was so so so worried that it wouldn't end up tasting good, but it did! It was SO good! It is definitely a repeat. So enjoy the pictures of our "practice" cakes from week 2 and week 4!

below- Amanda week 2 w/ her cake

below- Sara week 2 w/ her cake

below- Amanda's cake, week 4

below- Sara's cake, week 4 ( I was also practicing all the things I had missed on week 3. Thus the total decoration overload ;-D )