Wilton Course 4 - The Final Final!

Well this is it. The final cake class, the final exam, the final cake! There are no more courses after this one. This course we worked with fondant and gum paste. I had hoped for no contact with vile buttercream, but alas, there still was some. It was limited, but still the disgusting concoction of shortening, powdered sugar, fake butter flavoring, and meringue powder continues to haunt me. Gross.

In class the week before the final final, we made several different flowers from a gum paste/fondant mixture. I was actually rather pleased with them. Here are my daisies...


Cute huh? And here is my carnation. A carnation is pretty labor intensive, with several steps involved. But I was very happy with my outcome. I painted the tips with food coloring and the picture shows that it's still a little wet, but all in all, a pretty decent effort here.


Now as I prepare for the final final, I had to make a cake, fill it, frost it and then cover it with fondant. The decorating would take place in class. Here we go again! Boxed cake mixes are not my friend! I baked it, cooled it and then planned on trimming and freezing it. Well the trimming went fine. But when I picked up the layer to place it in plastic wrap to freeze, that is when the problem arose. The cake fell apart in my hands!


Urgh! It didn't seem like it was all that fragile. It was completely cooled. These dang things just don't like me. They're sick of me talking smack behind their backs about making scratch cakes and leaving them on the shelves. It's payback I tell you! It's a boxed cake mix revolt!! They'll show me, and they sure did!

Well, I smooshed the cake back together and wrapped it up tightly, determined to get what I needed out of this damn thing, which was a canvas for the decorations to come. The second layer stayed intact. Thank goodness.

When I took the cakes out of the freezer a few days later to prepare for class, the broken cake stayed together, fused by freezing. I would use it as the bottom.


With no other real options I filled the inside of the cake with vile buttercream, then iced the whole thing with the nasty stuff too.



Then rolled out my fondant and began the smoothing process.


It smoothed pretty well, and so I was ready to head to class for the... say it with me, final final.

The first part of class we learned how to make a fondant candy box. You can make this and put it on top of a cake and fill it with M&M's or jellybeans or tiny fondant flowers. Whatever floats your boat. Me, I think it's kind of ugly. Well, no... not ugly but just not something I would put on top of a cake.


Granted, I took the photo before it was totally dry and the lid would be stiffer, but still. Meh, just not my thing. It came out good though.

So now it's time to decorate our final cake. I had a plan and I was only mildly confident I could pull it off. But I wanted to do it. It was my last hurrah! I had to give it a shot. So I found a photo, I found black fondant and I got to work! Since my classmate Jill decided to be a slacker and not even bother to make a cake for the final (HA!) I put her to work on the border for my cake. And while we only got halfway finished in the time that was left of class, I am rather pleased with the result!


Oh yeah it's a zebra striped cake! Black fondant is a little messy and if you use the gum glue (made from a small amount of gum paste and water) as adhesive, it can bleed the black into the cake. But all and all, it is my tour de force!

Thanks to Jill for the help. Your balls are magnificent lol. Thanks to Alicia for putting up with me for 4 courses. And to all the other ladies I've met along the way. It was great fun, thanks for putting up with my cursing and my constant chatter. Alas, I don't think I'll ever be hired by Duff or Buddy. But it was fun and I did learn a lot =)

My Very Own Cake Wreck! Wilton Course 4, Class 2

Thank goodness I'm not a professional or my debacle may have actually ended up on Cake Wrecks! It all started out pretty good, and ahead of schedule I might add. Class is Thursday night and I made the cake on Tuesday. And I will say right here and right now, yes I should have frozen the layers. I didn't. In fact, I never even thought of it. But I'm putting it out there. I should have frozen it. So with that out of the way, the cake in question was a Duncan Hines banana cake. Generally if you read this blog regularly you know that I won't touch these class cakes with a ten foot pole. I hate vile buttercream and fondant isn't any better. But someone eats it so I do want to make sure it's edible. So without further ado, here is the cake that wasn't.

It started out all nice, cake trimmed and vile buttercream around the edge so the filling doesn't seep out.


So far, so good. I planned on filling it with vanilla pudding. OK, maybe a little too much vanilla pudding but that isn't exactly the problem.


Once the top cake is put in place, this is when bad stuff starts to happen. There's a crack on top, but I blob the vile buttercream on and start to spread.



It really doesn't want to spread, even though the consistency is good and not too stiff. The cake is starting to come off in big chunks and the pudding is oozing out a little.



As I frantically try and get the vile buttercream to hold the cake together, it's becoming more and more clear that it's just not happening!


The cake is a mess. It's fallen apart. There's no way at this point to salvage it.



What an absolute mess. There is only one thing left to do.


Toss that sucker in the trash!

Wilton Course 3 - The Final Exam!

Just in time for the next class to start, I bring you my final exam from Course 3 - Fondant and Tiered Cakes. Be afraid, and if it's too much, please look away!

First of all, this course had the most homework of any of the previous courses. Seriously. Before the final class we had to have a 9 or a 10 inch layer cake, a 6 inch layer cake, both iced and covered in fondant, they also needed to have their dowels in place. In addition to all that, we needed to bring some vile buttercream, 20-30 fondant roses and a bunch of fondant leaves.

Starting with the cake, since Nick and I will not touch anything that has that vile buttercream on it, I don't really bother making a cake from scratch for class. This week I used a Pillsbury fudge cake mix and I would say I will never use this cake mix again. As far as boxed cake mixes go, it's fine. It tastes decent and is very moist. Which is kind of the problem, it's very very moist. Which makes icing it kind of a nightmare. And I made it even more moist. I couldn't think of anything to use as a filling so while searching my pantry and refrigerator for something I found a bottle of maraschino cherries. I brushed each trimmed layer with the juice and then put the cherries in the middle of the cake.



Someone was most likely going to eat this cake so I didn't want it to have an empty center. That's just cruel! But then, icing it. No matter how many times I cleaned off my spatula, no matter how many times I tried to scrape the cake, it came out looking like a horrible crumby mess.


In the end though, it just didn't matter since I was covering the iced cake in fondant. So I rolled it out and got to work on smoothing the fondant over the cake.


I did ok, but ran into one little problem area.


I decided to make due with it though. Then I did it all again with the 6 inch cake. Yep, another crumby mess.


Booooo ghosty cake!


Nice, smooth. Just don't look at the other side ok?


Dammit! I told you not to look!


After getting both cakes covered, then I had to put the dowels in the 9 inch cake and get the dowels cut so they weren't sticking out by 5 inches in the cake.


So, armed with 20 fondant roses that looked really bad (I could not get my edges to ruffle and now realize that I needed to roll the fondant a bit thinner), no leaves because I forgot to make them, 2 cakes, vile buttercream and all the other supplies, I'm ready to head to class and put this final exam cake together!


The class mainly consisted of putting our tiered cake together and decorating it. As it turns out, my dowels didn't like up right with the pillars for the cake, so I had to move them.


It really wasn't much of a problem though because vile buttercream in the holes make it look pretty seamless, and plus the flowers were going to go over most of the area. So I started by putting the two cakes together with the pillars between them.



Then it was time to start piping the vile buttercream onto the cake so the roses would stick to the cake.


When the flowers were going to be on the side, a toothpick was added to insure they wouldn't fall off.


Once all the flowers were on, I had to color some of the vile buttercream green so that I could pipe on some leaves.




I also decided to make the border stars, yeah, because it's the easiest one. You caught me there. And then I decided to add more stars. The funny thing is, I've seen Buddy on Cake Boss say many times, "The more I added to that cake, the better it looked" and that really proved to be true. In the end, even though I was disappointed with my roses and I didn't get the fondant completely smoothed out in some areas, I was actually pretty happy with the look of the final product.

Wilton Course 3 - Fondant and Tiered Cakes

I'm a glutton for punishment. This fact is becoming very very clear. I decided to take Wilton's Course 3, Fondant and Tiered Cakes even though I have a fear of fondant. What does it taste like? Is it hard to work with? What about coloring it? I don't have a sheeter so how hard is it to roll? Lots and lots of questions. But I hiked up my big girl pants and dove in. It was in the second class that fondant really came into play. We played with it a little in the first class, but applying it to an actual cake happened in the second.

So let's start with the cake. You may remember from such blogs as this one and this one, how much I detest buttercream icing. This class uses buttercream and royal icing, but in very limited quantities. So let's start first with the cake. Class two is the package cake, meaning it looks like a package, so the cake was to be square. Knowing this probably will not end up being edible, I used a box cake mix and baked it in an 8 inch square pan. Check out the bump on this bad boy!



This cake had to be evened out so I used my handy dandy cake leveler, which by the way, is my fave tool ever. It's the coolest thing. It looks like this. And after leveling it, this is how the cake looked:


Then I put it on the cake board upside down so the flat side was up. Then it had to be iced with the vile buttercream. This step is important because it keeps the fondant in place. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it should be smooth.



So far, so good. From there I took the cake to class to finish up the decorations. But first, we got to make fondant roses. There are a lot of steps and they are time consuming, but I like them a lot better than vile buttercream roses. One of the reasons being that the center can be a jellybean! Believe me, when you realize you have to roll out the fondant, cut it, ruffle it, cup it, and fold it all up into a rose, the fact that you don't have to make the center too is a very welcome time saver! Here is my very first fondant rosebud.


So, now we're getting to the good stuff. Time to decorate our cake. We started by rolling out the fondant. It's like rolling out dough, and then you roll the fondant around the rolling pin like you would if you were making a pie.



Then drape it over the cake, and start smoothing it down!



My fondant might look like it's a little thick, but it actually wasn't. And it smoothed over the cake just beautifully. My fondant fears were so far proving to be unfounded. It's actually almost easier than vile buttercream!

Once the cake is covered and smoothed, I trimmed off the excess and started to build my decorations on it. I had strips of pink fondant that would look like a ribbon and bow, plus some pink spirals and some white flower cut outs. To get the fondant to stick to each other, we brushed each piece with clear vanilla extract.


And here it all is, put together. Hey not too bad for my first try huh?? (humor me ok?)



There are some errors, sure. And the edges could use a border. But I'm actually pretty pleased with this result. What I'm not pleased about is this weeks class. It's daunting, to say the least. Before class I will need to make about 30 fondant roses and some fondant leaves, two cakes (iced and covered with fondant), dowels placed in cakes. And then in class we will put it all together and tier them. I'd be totally lying if I didn't say I was ascared! Yikes!

Course Two Final Exam Cake - Don't Judge Me!

Onward and upward to Wilton Cake Decorating, Course Two. If I thought Course One was hard, that was a walk in the park comparatively!

Each class is an exercise in frustration, learning more and more flowers, more and more borders and working with vile buttercream. We were to make flowers each week, keep them and store them and then bring them all back to the final class to assemble our final exam cake. So first up was the chrysanthemum. That was met with absolute failure. So much so that I didn't even keep any. I kept telling myself I would make more later, but later never arrived. Rosebuds were also met with failure. Yeah, I really do suck at cake decorating.

Week two we were using royal icing which is basically just water and powdered sugar with a little meringue powder thrown in. Again, nothing I'd actually want to eat. Speaking of which, a few days ago I was watching Ina Garten on Food Network and she made a buttercream icing for her cake. Let's discuss that she did not use shortening. She did not use meringue powder. She did not use butter flavoring. Hell she didn't even use powder sugar! Nope. Ina's buttercream is made from real egg whites, sugar and water made into a simple syrup and five.... I repeat FIVE sticks of actual butter. That's a buttercream I can get on board with. But I digress...

Royal icing and color flow icing are both used in class 2. Color flow icing is basically royal icing but instead of the meringue powder you use color flow powder. What's the diff? No clue other than another way for Wilton to make more money. We started out making birds where you trace a bird design onto a board using Tip 2 to outline it then filling it in with color flow icing. I didn't take any pictures during any of the classes other than the last one, so you'll see my bird on the final cake picture.

Using Tip 101, we made Apple Blossom flowers. I actually did OK with those. That is until we had to change over to Tip 1 and put the little dots in the center. I don't mind telling this, I hate Tip 1. Tip 1 is evil. You need to be the Incredible Hulk to squeeze Royal icing out of the bag with Tip 1 on it. From Apple Blossom's we moved on to Violet's, using Tip 59 and, yep, you guessed it, that blasted evil Tip 1 reared it's ugly head again. After Violet's came the Violet Leaf using Tip 103. And that brings us to the end of Class 2. So in two hours we did birds, apple blossoms, violet's and violet leaves. That's a lot to cover in two hours.

On to Class 3 again using Royal Icing. We started out making the Victorian Rose. How it's different from a regular rose, I'm not quite sure. The technique is pretty much the same. After the rose came the daisy. After the daisy came the daffodil. After the daffodil came the pansy. After the pansy came the primrose. Seriously! All these flowers were covered in the 2 hours of class 3.

Class 4, the final exam is approaching. Now we need to bring in a cake made in the pans provided with the Course 2 kit. Knowing damn well that this cake would meet with an unfortunate demise when all was said and done, I opted for a box cake mix as I have with previous class cakes. The pans provided are oval shaped but quite frankly, the cakes came out of the oven looking like a couple of footballs. Thank goodness I have that wonderful cake leveler!

Cake... check. Leveled... check. Iced in vile buttercream.... check.

On to class armed with my cake, my flowers from previous weeks, a big bowl of craptastic buttercream and I'm ready! I'm ready to learn basketweave and put this bad boy together. And let me just say, I was in an extremely pissy mood on this particular day. Everything went wrong before I even got to class! But that's another story for the next blog. I will say however, that I decided to bring everyone a little Halloween treat and made cute spider web cupcakes with delicious chocolate cake. Upon arriving and opening my car door to retrieve everything I had to carry into class, the cupcakes hit the ground! No cupcakes for anyone :(

And because I was making a bunch of things that day, I only got one coat of icing on my cake and yes, it's all full of crumbs. I know better. I know to do two coats. I didn't have time and anyway, I was going to be loading this cake up with all kind of craptacular flowers. So in the end it didn't much matter. So here we go. Basketweave is tip 47 and I have to say, once you get a rhythm going, it moves quicker than I thought it would.



There is a specific problem that arises often in class and that is that the vile buttercream gets softer and softer from the heat of your hand as the class moves along. So while my basketweave is not perfect due to hand heat softening and my own less than stellar abilities, I'm actually pretty happy with how that part of the cake turned out. This is on half an hour of practice!




After the sides are completely weaved up, it's time to start placing flowers. There isn't really a rhyme or reason to this. Just make it look good. Hmmm.... yeah, I'll work on that. So I started placing flowers on the top.



I'm sure you've had no trouble distinguishing that the purple flowers on the sides are primose, the yellow flower is a daffodil and the purple flower in front is a daisy.

And here is the final product in all it's sucktastic glory!




I don't think Ace of Cakes or Cake Boss will be calling me any time soon.

Wilton Cake Decorating Class. Course 1, Week 4

Week four is our final week for Course 1 and that means only one thing... the dreaded rose. Granted, I totally psyched myself up for absolute failure. I'm just not at all artistic. But onward I went, armed with a cake that I won't have to throw out this week. I did use a boxed chocolate cake, but only because I had already bought it before I decided that my final exam should actually be edible.

I knew the decorating had to be done with the aforementioned vile buttercream but the actual cake could be icing with whatever we choose. So for my money, there is no better frosting than good old ganache. It is the absolute easiest thing in the world to make. All you need is one bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips put into a bowl and one cup of heavy cream. Heat the cream (but don't scorch it!) and then pour over the chocolate. Let sit for a couple minutes then whisk until smooth. Refrigerate for about an hour. If it's too hard to spread as a frosting, just microwave it in 10 second increments until you get the desired consistency. I used the ganache as my filling and as my frosting. I also brushed each layer of the cake with cold coffee, to give it a little something extra.

Now it's time, time to get down to the business of rose making. After asking around to the others in the class what color would go best with the chocolate frosting, pink seemed to be the consensus of what would go best. So pink it was. I colored my icing and we started practicing. Roses are not easy! They are in fact, quite a process from the base, to the wrap, to the petals (first three, then five, then seven!). Most of us seemed to really have trouble, especially with the icing staying smooth and not giving us a ruffled rose. This is my first attempt at a rose and you can see how ruffled it is, making it look more like a carnation than a rose.



Continuing on, we all worked very hard on our roses and quite frankly, I decided that if I were to pursue cake decorating I'd probably end up with carpal tunnel syndrome! It is very hard on the hands and the wrist.

We also practiced making leaves, stems and bows.

And now it was time to put our practice to use and decorate our cakes. Armed with six pink roses, I was ready to make my cake look special. To make it look like a bouquet, I put a little mountain of icing down first and then would place the roses on and around the mountain.




Switching to green icing now, it was time to make my leaves and my stems.




You can probably tell that I still have a bit if a shaky hand. My stems are a little squiggly.





I was actually rather pleased with how the leaves came out. So much so that instead of doing a bow, I decided to instead make more leaves.




Once I was finished, I decided to try my hand again at the shell border. I'm having a bit of a difficult time with my positioning on making the shell border, but I think I can improve with practice. I always found that shell borders look very nice on cakes.




It was not coming out at all how I had hoped so I switched to a star border mid way though. That was looking much better.




And here is my diploma! I had a great time in the class. And loved meeting everyone who took it at the same time. Thanks to our great teacher Alicia and to Patty for taking the class withe me! And special thanks to Rhett for my cool little surprise :)




I'm hoping to take Course 2 in July, but it may end up being canceled due to not enough people signing up for the class. If that's the case, they offer it again in October, so I'll just take it then.