Cake Decorating

I am currently in the second class of the Wilton three class series for cake decorating. Here are some pictures of what I learned in the classes so far, and how I've applied what I've learned out of class.

Class 1- Decorating Basics

Week 3: Filled and decorate cupcakes. Learned drop flowers, and the tip for filling. I had store-bought Bavarian chocolate filling (the pudding I made was too thin). I made strawberry cupcakes. I ended up giving them all away without tasting, though I was told there wasn't much filling in them.

Cupcakes from class - shaggy mums, drop flowers and leaves.

Week 4: Brought a cake to class. We learned roses, and writing, then had time to decorate the cake. We used piping gel in one frosting (peach, for me) to get a smooth, connectedness for letters. I held my breath while writing, and free-handed the words (instructor did mention there was a press you could use in smooth icing, and then trace with the piping gel, but I didn't have one, and probably won't get one - at least for a while yet).

Final class project - Basic Decorating class.

Birthday Cake - One thing we didn't cover in my cake decorating class, but that was in the book, was using piping gel to transfer an image onto a cake, so you have a clear outline to work with when icing. I tried to follow the instructions in the book to get the image of Hello Kitty onto this cake for my friend's birthday, but it didn't really work. I ended up doing the image, made with stars like we learned in the first class, free-handed, using the paper image for reference. 

Hello Kitty birthday cake for my friend, Rusty.

 
Good Luck cupcakes: One of my student assistant's recently graduated, and was hired at a full time job. For her good bye party, I made filled vanilla cupcakes. The flowers were color coded on the cupcakes to indicate which kind of filling they had (raspberry preserves or chocolate). I didn't consider that the letters would be wavy on the piped icing on top, so that was a lesson learned here. I enlisted help from my sister, teaching her how to add the center to the drop flowers, and how to do leaves, and she helped with the decorating.

"Good Luck" cupcakes with drop flowers.

Class 2 - Flowers and Cake Design  

Week 1: We worked with a combination of gum paste and fondant to make the flowers this week. It was very tiring to kneed them together. It reminded me of therapy clay, but I had to work it longer than any therapy session in order to get colors mixed. Button flowers were created using a press, and the  pansy using a cutter and other fun tools.

Gum paste and fondant flowers -Button Flowers and Pansy.