Decorating Classes

As you know, I've been mostly working with fondant as my cake medium. I've wanted to work more with regular icing and see how that goes, so I've been taking the Wilton classes that Michael's Arts & crafts stores hold. I started with Class # 1. We're dealing with standard decorating.

The basics: How to make icing, how to fill bags, how to make shells and lines, letters, flowers and leaves. It's kind-of challenging. I tend to get frustrated because by the time I think I have something down, class is over.

Tonight, I decided to try making roses. The teacher has a trick of starting the bases of the roses with a Hershey Kiss. It's fun.

The icing was a bit thin, so the roses kept drooping, but I think, all in all, I did a good job on these.

Baby Shower Cake - Pea Pod

I was searching Google Images for Baby Shower cakes ideas. I found some cute Flikr pictures from Simply-Sweets.com for a Pea Pod Baby cake, so I decided to give it a go.

I made the pea pod out of gum paste a few days early, so it could harden.




Isabel helped me cut out baby-themed shaped from the same gum paste. These would be used on cupcakes I decided to make to complement the cake.


Aaaaak! An Arm!!

Immediately after taking this picture...I touched his eye and made a mess of it. Argh!

Last night I made the cake and the cupcakes. I wanted them to be completely cooled before I started to decorate them.

Yum!! Homemade chocolate icing (semi-sweet chocolate squares, butter, confectioners sugar, milk and vanilla extract).

I dumped the a.c. in my house so the kitchen would be cool. I did not want to have the fondant be sticky and gross, like the last cake attempt I made. :(

Speedy!

Isabel helps me smooth the fondant over the cake.

I placed the "pea in the pod" on the cake, along with the leaves and vine.

Here are the cupcakes (no big deal) and the cake. The baby shower is tomorrow. It is for a co-worker of David's. The shower is a surprise. She does not know of it, nor does she know I am making the cake and cupcakes as a gift to her. Due to a conflict with a class I am taking (more on that later), I will be late to the party. David and Isabel will be taking these items to the party and I will meet them there about 45 minutes late.

Stroller Cake Mess

It must be in the water. I personally know four pregnant women right now. One of them, David's co-worker is having a shower, so I tentatively said I'd like to make the cake. She doesn't know it, so if I don't, none the wiser.


As you know by now, I am all about the testing (Wall-E takes 1 & 2, the Chick cake fail). I want to see if I can do it before I get the final products (Final Wall-E, Final Chick Cake).


I am also all about wanting new cake recipes, because although the recommended Madeira recipe for making shaped cakes is solid enough for carving, it tastes like a brick.



I tried a new recipe from the 500 Cakes book. I can't even remember which one. Why can't I remember? Let me show you.



The fondant is colored (she's having a boy).





The cake's in the oven.







I have a cappuccino while I wait. (bonus points if you can tell me about my mug).




The cake comes out of the oven, it cools, I cut it in half, place a raspberry jam/whipped cream mixture (homemade) in the middle. I cover it in homemade butter cream icing and get to work.




Now, the instructions are all wonky. Place it on its bottom, put a ring around it, flip it over & cover it in fondant, flip it back and tuck the fondant over the ring. There was a lot of flipping back and forth going on. The last flip, caused this:






I wasn't even upset really. It was a new cake recipe, so I knew it might fail. The cake was delicious, just not strong enough to hold up to the weight of the fondant and all that flipping. I left the cake on the counter, in a cake carrier, and we picked at it for a couple of days.



TAKE 2


THIS time, I am back to the Madeira recipe I hate. I figure I'll make a great tasting rectangular cake, frost and decorate it, and then put the Madeira stroller cake on top. People can eat the good cake while admiring the Madeira stroller cake.




Immediately I realized it was too hot in the kitchen The same fondant as before was mushing, sticking, it was bad. I was disgusted and to the point of tears. I texted David to say that i was *not* making the baby shower cake.







Fairy Isabel (who last week realized that Isabel rhymes with Tinkerbell) liked it. But she's 5. ;)




I tried to smooth the fondant around the stroller, but every indentation of my fingers remained. I used my cake smoother and it tore the fondant. I wanted to chuck the thing in the garbage.



Call me obsessive, but this is NOT something I want to have at a baby shower.

Ladybug Cake

From one of my Debbie Brown cake books.

While the cakes cooled, (the small one's just for snacking. I had extra batter that I did not want to go to waste)



I colored come white fondant green to color the cake board, and



I whipped up some home-made cream cheese icing. Yum!





The cake was cut in half so I could add icing to the middle of it, then I covered the whole thing in more icing.




I covered the cake in red fondant.

I scored a line across her back, making the wings.

I made her head with a black ball of fondant and secured it in place with both sugar water and toothpicks. Licorice antennae were added with fondant black balls on the ends. Isabel helped me add the black dots on her wings too.

Isabel and I covered the green cakeboard with yellow petals.

I scored her mouth with a circle cutter. She's one Happy Ladybug.

Nothing Fancy but It's Good

I purchased this book. Not sure why I blogged about it on my regular blog though. You can get caught up there.



I decided on making a Coffee & Praline Layer cake. I won't give the recipe, due to copyright yada yadas. Go buy the book. It's good and low priced on Amazon. I'm just trying to find good cake recipes for underneath my fun cake projects.






The cakes themselves were not too difficult to make.





While the cakes cooled, I made homemade praline. Note to self: MELTED SUGAR IS MOLTEN LAVA! Holy SMOKES!!






This was my first time working with mascarpone (NOT MaRscapone, MaScarpone). It was very easy to work with and really bland, until you added the powdered sugar. This above was colored this way due to adding coffee to it, and was only half-way done. There was more sugar to be added, which thickened it up.

The bottom cake was iced, another layer stacked on top, both cakes were iced, the home-made praline was cracked and sprinkled on top and voilà ! [It's not "Wahhlahh", people. (Yes, I saw that written like that fairly recently.) It's French and basically means, Look There! Voi from Voir (look or see) and La (there). Look There! voilà !]

The coffee icing was excellent, the cake was firm but not dry. Great cake recipe, but if you're a coffee-hater, this one's not for you.

The Sun Rises and Twilight is No More

I have been asked a few times, and the answer is, Yes. Yes, it is sometimes painful to cut into your pieces of art. Alas, it must be done.

I am still looking for the ever-elusive best-cake-ever recipe though. The outside looks amazing, but it's the inside that counts. The recipes I have tried, and I have tried many, are still not good enough for me. *sigh*

Twilight Cake

OK. I'm a Twilight Mom. I admit it. Not the stalkery-crazy kind, mind you. Yes, the books started off a little juvenile, but she got better. They are fun, they are fantasy and they have Edward.

I search the 'net and find several people making Twilight cakes, fantastic Twilight cakes, so I thought I'd give it a go. I bought some black and red fondant from Into the Oven, because there is no WAY I am going to color white fondant black. It would take forever and kill my arms in the process.

Here we gooooooo.


First, I realized..I have a lot of pans. This was me trying to figure out how to stack them. I opted for two layers instead of three, of the dome pans in the background.

I got a fantastic, wonderful cake recipe from Bakerella. This recipe was SO tasty! But the larger if the two cakes was so moist, it fell apart on Thursday night while I was trying to move it! Oh well. I kept the broken cake pieces in a plastic container and we've been munching on the pieces.

Tonight, I go back to my old, firmer butter cake recipe and make a rather large 10 " cake. (The 6" one from last night survived (pictured below).




While the large cake cooled, I covered the smaller one with fondant, and began making the chess board.







Next came covering the larger cake all in black and stacking the cakes.






I covered the bottom of the small cake with a red fondant ribbon, created the red chess piece and the "bloody" flower, which was bloody hard.




The larger chess piece. Yea. Difficult. I put it on a skewer to give it support. I won't even tell you what Jacob and I ended up naming it by the end.











Off to Wal-Mart I went. I was out of apples.















The apple for "Twilight," the flower for "New Moon," the ribbon for "Eclipse" and the chess board and pieces for "Breaking Dawn."

Here is the final product.