Cake Decorating Numero Uno

On my 101 list of things to do, you'll find "Take a Cake Decorating Class". I've been wanting to take a class for a long time now, but haven't done much about it. I got an email from Michael's (the craft store) announcing that Cake Decorating Classes were 40% off during the month of August. That made them only $27 for 4 weeks. I thought that was a reasonable price, and it was a night of the week that I could make it work. So, Mondays from 6:30-8:30 p.m. I try my hand at decorating.

How's it going? Let me put it this way. I burned my cake (2 9-inch round chocolate cakes), and they were uneven. They had little peaks and valleys. :( So I tried to cut off the top to level out the cake and make it a flat surface all the way across. Did I ever mention I failed kindergarten? That lesson about cutting straight lines?? Big fat F. So, my cake was still lopsided - though not so many peaks and valleys. More like a slope. Mudslide would even be accurate.

Then to the frosting. I should have used a bigger bowl to start out. By the time I got the 2 pounds of powdered sugar in the bowl, I looked like a ghost. Powdered sugar everywhere. I definitely should have used a bigger bowl. Now I know...

Since I made stiff frosting, I need to water some parts of it down to make medium and thin frosting for different decorating techniques. Hint: if you pour water in the bowl and just start mixing - you get wet. Try stirring it around a little first. Then to the coloring of the frosting. I used my gel colors and got some pretty neat colors. I used a little too much "lemon yellow" and ended up with a very bright-and-almost-blinding yellow for my cake. I also mixed "royal blue", "cornflower blue", and "moss green". I planned wholeheartedly to use each of these colors on my cake.

Cake iced, frosting mixed and colored, bag packed, I was ready. I headed off to class and got there just in time. Everyone else was already set up (my student stayed and chatted awhile after lesson, so I left a little later than usual) when I got there, so I already felt behind. Then I had to go buy my practice board. (I was going to just make one, but that didn't happen.) I felt behind all class. I forgot my scissors, and since I had colored my frosting, I had to switch bags everytime I wanted a different consistency of frosting. That was awful. I thought I only brought one coupler, so it took me forever to wipe it off, clean it out, get a new bag, fill it, etc. Not to mention the first bag I filled - I forgot the coupler all together. I just had a very "off" night. When i was putting everything away, I found a second coupler in the bottom of my bag. Excellent. I had already resolved that the second class was over and I was cleaned up, I would buy extra couplers. At 50 cents a pop, I felt I could spring for 8. Yes, 8. Never again will I spend half the class switching couplers and colored frosting. We practiced using our star tip, writing, curved border lines with the star tip, and dots. Surprisingly enough, the dots take skill. Oh, and we learned the bottom of the flower. By the way - my flower nail? Too small. I have the wrong size. I plan to be prepared and my frosting in the bags already by the time I get there next week.

So after we learned and practiced everything, we had 30 minutes to decorate our cakes. I looked at my plain white cracked-icing cake and decided with my trusty bag of yellow frosting, I would make a star. Switching tips wasn't as time-consuming as switching colors or consistencies, because I didn't have to switch the coupler. So...I outlined a star (free hand of course) picked off half of it because it was crooked, and tried again. Knowing I didn't want to waste the whole 30 minutes trying to outline a dang star, I settled with 'crooked with character' instead of perfection, and started to fill it in with my star tips. I can definitely tell where my first few stars were, because I could see improvement by the time I filled the whole thing in. Then I tried the curvy border. Failed miserably, but once again - no time to care. Josh would have the cake eaten before I could point out the lines were crooked, so I didn't worry about it. Move on Katie! Then I tried my hand at dots. Some look like tiny yellow hershey's 'Kissables' candies. They have that swoopy part on top. Some, were more successful. After about 5 minutes, my hand got really shaky, and the yellow started to blind. Whew!

So, without further introduction, here is my first cake from cake decorating class.






P.S. For my cake board I took the bottom of a box of bottled water and covered it with foil. Unfortunately, the box had been bendy and opposite corners of it were curling. Perhaps that's why my icing didn't go so well...

Stay tuned for more adventures in Cake Decorating. I'm sure I'll do something else stupid next week. :)