Aggies Do It Better

This week, the final class, we spent the first class practicing a few different kinds of borders, and then a basketweave technique like you would use the sides of a cake if you were making a basket theme cake. Honestly, I thought I would be able to do that no problem, I've seen it before, but it was harder than I thought! It took me 4 times of wiping my practice board clean and trying again to "get" it. Then we had the rest of the time to decorate our cakes. I came up with a design, finally, earlier in the week, and got to work mid-week on the flowers I wanted for my cake. Originally I wanted to do an all-white, bridal type cake. White cake, White frosting. After I made the flowers, I decided they'd look better against an off-white, but not colored, background. I started out with a 9 inch vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream on the inside and a newly invented Mocha Buttercream on the outside. If you like coffee, or coffee ice cream, then you can just imagine how good...

This class we did more of the roses. This time, I actually got it! I was so proud of myself. This is putting the first petal on the rose base. Then the second row of petals. Then a 3rd (or even 4th if you want) row of petals. My icing consistency was a little soft, so my some of my petals look a little melty. But, you get the idea. Look at me!!!! Next up was violets. My icing was't exactly purple, but close enough. These are pretty cute too! Then daffodils. These are just ok in my book. They were kind of hard to make. Then, Lillies. I like these alot, and think they will come quite in handy around Easter, but I definitely need some practice. These are flowers that having a correct consistency of icing would really help.

This week in the Flowers and Cake Design class, we did a ton! The first part of making a rose with our royal icing we made at home (which is tricky! we were all having problems with the consistency of it). This icing dries rock hard and these flowers can be made way in advance, and are ideal for cakes that will have many many flowers on them. The we stuck wax paper squares on a flower nail with a template underneath it. The "rose base" is basically a Hershey's kiss shaped dollop of icing. You would think that sounds pretty easy, but for some reason, I could. not. get. it. All mine looked like drunk elf hats. You can't really tell in this pic, because they're covered with the first leaf of the rose, the center petal. But you can see how crooked they are! Frustrating. We skipped ahead a little and made actual roses with a couple of our bases. Of the 2 here, the good one my instructer did, and the "special" looking one, well, that's mine. Then we moved ...

I recently completed another Wilton cake decorating class, called "Flowers and Cake Design". The class I took before, last fall, was Fondant and Gum Paste . I was really on the fence about taking this class, mostly because as I said before, I'm not really a "flower" person. But I had such a blast at the Fondant class, and we actually made a TON of flowers in there, and I wasn't actually horrible at it, and ::stop the presses:: I liked making the flowers. So, here we are. The classes are once a week, for 4 weeks, 2 hours each. Here's what we did in the first class. Our in our kit we had this thing called a Button Flower Cut and Press set. This is something really cool and cute. There is a leaf one too but I don't have it. It's SO easy to use. You mix a little gum paste and fondant together, then roll it out. On the back of the right side there is a nifty rectangle-shaped ridge around the edge of the plate that you press into what you rolled out an...

So....this is what my kitchen table has looked like for the past week. Except when I have to clean up to feed the goofballs. I've been making the flowers that were going on the cake, a few at a time. Which is kind of annoying, considering all the stuff you have to get out to make them. Would I have liked to be able to make them all at once? YES. Will my boys allow that? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. But anyway, I got pretty much all of them done in not exactly the colors I wanted, and they wound up being pretty fall-ish. I was pretty busy Sunday morning making this chocolate-marshmallow fondant. I'd never made it before, but I wanted to bring in something I'd be working with (like the regular marshmallow fondant. That's what I usually use instead of the boxed kind because it tastes so much better) and could practice with. Oh, and also? This was the first square cake I've ever baked also in my brand-new square pans. My wedding cake was square, that's how much I love square...

Here's a quick update on my 3rd Fondant and Gum Paste class from this weekend. We learned 2 more flowers, daisy and mum. Besides being a little frustrated with the less-than-clean lines the plastic cutters cut out (I prefer metal), it went pretty well! For the last class we are supposed to bring in a cake that has been iced (crumb coated) and all the stuff we want to put on it and assemble it in class. We can either do one of the pictured cakes in the book or come up with something original. Yall know me, am I gonna copy something exactly ? Uh, no way. I've been trying to come up with something for the past couple weeks and finally made a decision. There's several cakes in the book that have TONS of flowers on top, and I kept coming back to those. But ugh, that's alot of work! Also, most of the flowers we've done are very "spring-y", and really wanted to do something a little more season-appropriate. Like in "fall" colors. So that's what I...

Yall, this is BIG news! I am NOT a floral person. I barely had any flowers at my wedding, and would have had less if my dad didn't make me (floral arrangements for the altar, which were pretty). I mean, I like receiving flowers from my man as much as the next gal, but for the most part, I could take them or leave them. When we were wedding-cake shopping, we went to a high-end cake place that was very well known in the city and known for doing alot of flowers on their cakes. The only reason we went there was to just start shopping around. I knew that I didn't want any flowers on the cake. You should've seen the lady's face when I told her I didn't want any. (giggle) I know probably alot of people can probably make flowers out of icing. I can't even do that. There is another Wilton class that tackles that, which I will probably take at some point. Yesterday we made some flowers to go with the bases we made last week. A rose, carnation, and calla lily. These are ...

I've gone back to school. Well, kind of. I'd like to say that "you don't need math for this", but you kind of do! I am taking a month-long cake decorating class at Michaels (craft store) from Wilton. It is 4 2-hour long classes, once a week for one month. They offer a basics class, a Fondant class, and a Flowers class. I'm doing the Fondant class first. And, we are doing some flowers in this class too. I've wanted to take these classes FOREVER (well, since I started doing this) but you know, life just keeps on gettin' in the way. So I'm finally in a spot where I can. And I'm pumped. This is from my first class. We rolled out fondant and cut it into strips with a really cool tool (I'll do a post on all the cool gadgets later) and then fold them into strips and "glue" the ends together with any number of liquids. The goal is to make enough loops for a bow. (Apparently, according to Wilton, the number is 14) These are the ...

I bought some Silly Bandz. You know. They're the newest and coolest thing to put on your wrist since awareness bands. Which is funny, because they aren't really new at all. When I worked at the zoo about 5 years ago someone gave me a pink one in the shape of a hippo. Not sure where she got it. Really cute, but I remember thinking, what do you do with this? We used them as actual rubber bands, or just kept them in our pockets. gasp!! I think I still have it, but I have no idea where it is. I remember last year hearing about these things and I didn't know what they were for the longest time, and when I saw them , I was all, that's not new! Anyhow, I didn't get the craze, and I usually don't jump on "fad"wagons, unless it involves wrist thingies. I do like those. I've been looking at them wherever I see them and figured I'd get them when I saw some cool ones. And then, I did. I saw these at a sports store near here. Actually, I saw Univ Of Tenn o...