Ok, I've been bad. Turns out the subtitle of this blog is, in fact, true: This blog was proof I had too much time on my hands. Now that I've got a job (that's another post) and been decorating cakes for a wedding (yet another post), I've neglected this site for well over a month. And in that time, I've made some more cakes. SO, This is my catch-all, "Let's see what Andy's been doing in class for the last few Mondays" post.
First, we have the last cake of Wilton Class II. The class itself was rather amusing, because Siobhan was sick & our third classmate had taken off for parts unknown, so it was just me & Sue. So, I got all of her attention. We finished off the basketweave and decorating my cake in just about an hour. Amazing how fast you can go when you're the only student.
For decorating the cake, I had a bunch of flowers from previous classes plus a Color-Flow Pac-Man, so I decided "Why waste anything?" and came up with this:
If you think the cake looks a little off-white, for once it isn't my camera. As an experiment, I used butter-flavored Crisco instead of the normal stuff in my frosting. This had a few effects:
- The frosting was off-white.
- The frosting wasn't as sweet.
- The frosting smelled like microwave popcorn.
- The frosting had a small aftertaste resembling microwave popcorn.
Moral of the story: Butter-flavored Crisco = not so good.
Anyway, that was the end of the second course. On to Course III!
Siobhan, due to various circumstances, ended up not taking this class. Thankfully, however, we had more people this time: Carmelle and April, a future mother-in-law / daughter-in-law pair planning to make April's wedding cake themselves, and Roxanne, a woman more talented than she has any right to be. Carmelle and April (and maybe Roxanne, too?) also distinguished themselves by taking Course III and Course I at the same time. That means they were producing twice as many cakes as I was, on a weekly basis. I don't know how they did it.
Anyway, I missed the first class because I was sick. Apparantly, nifty borders were made. I'll have to go back to the book & learn'em at some point. Oh, well.
The second class dealt with rolled fondant. Let me just say one thing about Wilton ready-to-go store-bought fondant: DO NOT USE IT. It's terrible. Utterly terrible. So, keeping that in mind, consider how unwise this was:
Disturbing in appearance, disturbing in flavor. That's all fondant, my friends. Think on that. Yikes.
The buttercream under the fondant helped mitigate the flavor somewhat, and you know that when the Crisco-sugar buttercream is your savior, nothing good is going on. I tried a piece just to find out how it tasted, but this is the one cake I made that I did not force upon my friends (not that I didn't try, mind you--they were just too smart for me).
Carmelle & April had some chocolate-almond pourable fondant made up that tasted pretty dang good, so I'm not going to go totally anti-fondant. Just anti-Wilton store-bought fondant. Friends don't let friends use that stuff.
The third class was mostly making flowers with a lily nail. You can do some nice stuff with it, but I couldn't that night. First my royal icing was too stiff to use without bursting a vein, then I added some water to thin it and got it too thin to be of much use. So, my poinsettas looked like sea anemones, and I declined to take pictures. It just wasn't worth remembering.
Finally, we come to tonight, the last class of the last course: putting together a tiered cake. And what do I do? Fail to plan my weekend correctly and fail to make the cakes. So, I came with the plan to just sit back and watch my classmates do it. But, as fate would have it, April was sick and it was her turn to do most of the pre-class work. So, I ended up helping Carmelle ice, build, and decorate her tiered cake.
While Roxanne put together the most beautiful cake ever behind us (I believe that lady'll be teaching a class before too long), Carmelle & I got goofy on our cake. She took the bottom, I took the top, we had a few lily-nail flowers, a bunch of forget-me-nots, a fondant cake-topper, a whole bunch of color, and absolutely no plan. What we produced was two good-looking cakes that really had nothing to do with each other, but we stacked'em anyway, because we could. Here's some shots:
Here's a close-up of my part:
The flowers and the hearts were already made in previous classes and the bird is plastic & came with the class kit. My contributions--besides arrangement--consist of the ribbons & the leaves.
Here's a close-up of Carmelle's half:
Despite all her claims that she didn't care what it looked like, it turned out pretty good-looking, I must say.
And that about wraps up the Wilton classes. Sue's done with teaching'em too, so she's headed off to parts unknown, bless her. As for the rest of us, now that we've finished this up, it's time to get to the hardcore stuff over at our new favorite store Sweet Celebrations!
Coming up next: Our skills are put to the test!
But for now, I'll leave you with this awe-inspiring shot:
