Cake Decorating 201

I am currently participating in the second part of the Wilton cake decorating course, entitled "Flowers and Cake Design". I hate flowers on cakes, they're common. But alas, I digress. The price and timing of the course were right. I needed some new skills. Today was week three of the four week course, learning how to make this sort of ugly thing.

In part one, I discovered that buttercream icing is nothing more than a slab of fat with icing sugar in it. I also learned some useful skills and eventually, I turned out a pretty decent cake of my own design. I was satisfied with the course, although I still lacked many skills at the end.

So far, in part two, I've found out that royal icing is not just gingerbread house glue. When fashioned into a shape and dried, you have a dried shape. Also, small amounts of coloured fondant mixed with gum paste can be used for making expensive flowers.

For three weeks, the class has been making an assortment of flowers. I wasn't clear on why except to learn how to make them. An overview of what was to happen during these four weeks would have been helpful, but alas, our directions each week were to make any colour of icing and green icing. If I had known why, I would have planned my colours more carefully. I usually created one or two flowers and eventually tossed them in the trash.  A few came home with me and are currently sitting in a dish on my buffet.

Today, I found out that we were supposed to keep the flowers, dry them all, and bring them to decorate a cake next week. Oops. The flowers above are gone. I have these left.

Tonight, I must plan my final cake and create appropriate replacement flowers so that they will dry by next Wednesday. I am resisting the temptation to make fairies, fruits or forest creatures out of my remaining gum paste and royal icing. The course is entitled "Flowers and Cake Design". I want my certificate but I don't want a boring flowered cake. Any ideas or suggestions? 

Preparation Perspiration

Wow! Who knew it would be so difficult to learn to decorate a cake? At no point did it occur to me that in order to learn to decorate cakes, one would actually need cakes, icing, tools, and mountains of decorating paraphernalia.

My challenge was to bake an 8 inch cake and mix two containers of icing to take to class tomorrow.  After realizing I only had half a bag of icing sugar, I checked the buttercream icing recipe to see how much more I had to purchase. I made a list of everything I needed and went shopping.

Each batch of icing, required one pound of icing sugar. Sounded simple enough. As I neared the appropriate aisle at the grocery store, I found the sugar.. "Hmmmm", I thought."I need two pounds." I saw bags that contained the words "one kilogram" and my life flashed before my eyes. Inches, feet, yards, pounds, miles, acres, cords, gallons, fluid ounces. During my youth, I could barely fathom imperial measurement. Then, along came metric. It was in a league of its own, although I thought I finally had it mastered. At no point did my brain register what I clearly knew. One cup is eight ounces, therefore I'd only need four cups for my two batches.

I tried to make it far too complicated. "Let me see," I said to myself. "one pound is 2.2 kilograms."

I have no idea where I got that absurd idea for conversion. Clearly the gray matter wasn't firing on all cylinders. Perhaps I was confused with one mile is 2.2 kilometers, or 2.2 fahrenheits make a celsius, or a metre stick and a yard stick are almost the same except for the 40 inches. Who knows? Essentially, here's what I calculated that I needed.

The bag on the top is the partial bag I already had. The only difference is that I used four cups out of it for the icing and still had most of the bag left. As it turned out, the recipe was simple and my buttercream icing is perfect (no actual butter was harmed in making that trans fat delicacy).

It's late now. It was very hot today. I still need a cake. My second cake is currently baking in the oven. I waited until evening to avoid overheating the house. Although the measurements were precise, the first cake refused to bake properly. Murphy's Law. I used all the helpful handy baking hints we got at last week's class.

 I need a cake!

If the second cake doesn't turn out, I'll be forced to use my tub of icing to decorate the other tub of icing. After all, I certainly have the ingredients to make a lot more of it.

Cake Decorating 101- Week 1

I have always been fascinated by people who have the ability to make cakes look beautiful. My mother had that skill. I have no idea where she learned it, but by age 20, she was the envy of Northern Ontario.

She showed me the Dr. Oetker cookbook which was her inspiration. Not only was it written in "ye olde German" script, but the faded colour photos gave no instruction as to how one creates these masterpieces. She just did it. People flocked to our house for a slice of torte and I always had the best attended birthday parties.

Over the years, I have tried. I have created some nice enough cakes and cupcakes. I've even managed a few black forest cakes. I've molded and painted tiny marzipan fruits to highlight the top of a chocolate shell. I was particularly proud of a Father's Day effort which was covered in Smarties to resemble a shirt and tie. That was easy, anyone could do it.  I followed a pattern. When I attempted my son's "Ninja Turtle" cake (blog Aug. 27, 2011), I realized that icing and fondant were a huge mystery.

I recently enrolled in a cake decorating class. Yesterday, was my first day. The instructor announced her impressive credentials and proceeded to ask why each of us was there. My answer was simple. "I'm retired and I have the time now."  She then said that this would be the first four weeks of a seventeen week course. Uh oh. I don't think I have the time.

We were told that we would all proceed at our own skill level and that we would develop our own "style". There are no such things as poor efforts, bad decorating or ugly cakes. Really? Then she mentioned that she would very quickly be able to evaluate our ability. Our first task was to decorate cookies. Lesson #1 in the instruction book contained some examples.

The first class went quickly. By the time I was finished, I was able to successfully make rosettes on cookies. They looked exactly like the photo above...well, almost. The instructor praised several people's efforts. She seemed disinterested in mine and made no comment. She was clearly so dazzled by my natural talent and creativity that it rendered her speechless.

I garnered some important information which seems obvious, but I didn't know before.

1. When slicing a cake to fill, cut through the middle but put a toothpick at the top and bottom half before taking the layers apart. That way you can replace it in the exact same place to keep the cake level. No need for extra filling to level the cake? No trying to make it fit and ending up with a slanted cake? Why didn't anyone ever tell me?

2. Make a buttercream icing dam between two layers of cake. In other words, cut the cake in half, make a ring around the edge with icing, then put whatever choice of filling in the middle. Then it won't ooze out. Clever. Also, do not press down on the top of the cake when the layer is replaced...same reason. By not pushing down, the cake also becomes taller.

3. Use more icing than you need. It's easier to remove than to add icing. This also avoids getting crumbs in the icing, so no more crummy cakes.

4. Some parchment paper, smoothed over rough portions of the cake, then removed, help give it that all over even look.

For next week's class, we need to bring an 8 inch cake to decorate. I'm looking forward to it and have already packed most of my required materials. Hopefully, I'll be able to share photos and instructor comments about my effort.