Sadly Monday night was the last day of my cake decorating course – the night that we had spent the last 7 weeks preparing for!
We had the choice of either working on the polystyrene mould or making an edible cake and bring it to class already covered in fondant and piped. I chose the latter because who really wants to spend all that time decorating a cake that you can’t eat? Not me.
So Sunday I got up early and tried to make as little noise as possible whilst baking my chocolate cake – I think I did pretty well at the noise control but Craig might beg to differ.. I decided to make a regular cake and cut it into three layers with chocolate butter cream inside. All good so far. Then came the icing part – I coloured my fondant icing blue (one of the three colours I have) and managed to roll it out and cover cake without too many problems. I did notice that there was a slight leaning tower of piza feel to the cake but hopefully it would be only my critical eyes that would notice.
Piping next and this was the part I was nervous about, once you make a mistake it is hard to fix it – so I didn’t want any mistakes! I placed my template on the cake and it actually fit better than it had on the mould which was good. Once I got going on the piping it was pretty easy, my pattern wasn’t too tricky. Once the sides were done I thought that it needed something else so decided to cover the top of the cake with a cornelli lace pattern which is basically lots of squiggles but looks very effective. It took longer than I was expecting and my hand almost started cramping up but I was happy with the way it turned out.
So Monday night we painted our frangipanis and blossoms and arranged them on our cakes. I have learnt that cake decorating is not for the impatient, if you try and rush something you will probably break it or put something on wrong – so it helps to get yourself in a bit of a meditative state first. I am still learning how to do this!
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| The finished product |
I went for subtle colour on my frangipanis and added a bit of pink petal dust to my blossoms to give them a bit of depth and I think they turned out well.
There was one frangipani casualty when I was attaching them to the cake but luckily a couple of well placed leaves filled the gap.
All in all I was really happy with the cake and everyone one was very impressed – I have even scored myself a cake order for next week!
Here are some photos of my cake and some of the groups finished cakes – hope you like it.
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| I can't make it the right way up! |
Now I have to decide what to do next!!
