More cake decorating!

I believe that I'm going to give my co-workers diabetes. With all of the baked goodies going from my kitchen into their tummies, something's gotta give. It doesn't look like it's going to be their appetite though - week three of cake decorating class, and they're still trying to convince me to sign up for the advanced class so that they can get cake for another four weeks!

Last night was loooong. Even though we brought in our cakes pre-frosted, everyone was having quite a bit of trouble with the techniques that we were to learn. Oddly enough, things like stringwork and bunting-like swag for the edges of the cake were not nearly as difficult for me as those silly little 5-petaled flowers that we learned last week. We went over them again, and I still couldn't get them quite right. I finally was able to churn out a few of them to decorate my cake with. My excuse was that the royal icing was way too goopy and not nearly stiff enough to get good definition for each of the petals. Everything just smooshed together. After a couple hours wrestling with buttercream, that was not what I needed!

Unfortunately, I couldn't use any of the side decorations, as my cake was meant to be one layer in a two-layer cake and was therefore quite short. Luckily, I remembered to bring my camera to this class, so you instead get my practice pieces on a wax papered box. Snazzy!

Pretty interlaced stringwork!

Cute ruffles and rosettes

The last thing we learned before we left for the evening was how to make a simple rosebud. I must admit, the flower portion alone didn't look anything like, well... a flower! Once a little stem and some other bits were piped in though they looked rather normal. It would have been better in green, but alas, no green royal icing to be found! I'm definitely seriously considering signing up for the advanced class - this has been a lot of fun, and I think there's a lot more that I can and would like to learn about decorating cakes.

Pretty rosebuds (thank goodness, no more pink!)

Fie! Fie on you silly little flowers!

And the final cake!