Spring Sensation

Last Tuesday was the last day of my Cake class, and the last course too. We learned to make delicate flowers like the Carnation and Daisies using Gumpaste.

I made a Fondant Cake with a small trinket box on top, with daisies flowing from the box.


The Daisies were easy to make and very delicate. They look so adorable that its hard to go back to making flowers with frosting! :-D Gumpaste rules!

Fondant Cake

My first try at a Fondant cake at class, as always we were allowed to choose our colours for the cake as well as the decorations.

This is a Basic Yellow Cake covered in Green Fondant, decorated with buttercream frosting.

The course we are doing now is all about Fondant and Gumpaste. So more fondant cakes to follow! :)

Tiered Cake

Last Tuesday was the end of Course 3 of the Wilton Cake Decorating Class. With every class I feel so much more confident and pleased with the techniques I've learned. Course 3 was all about Fondant cakes.

Fondant is nothing but a mixture of Sugar and water, cooked till it forms a dough. The texture is a little stiffer than regular play dough. More info on Fondant here.

Though its only sugar and water, after all the processing, the taste somehow appeals only to a few. As my instructor says, "you either like it or you don't"..no two ways about it. I am still deciding whether I like it or not :-D

During the course we learned how to make Fondant Roses and leaves, more Royal Icing Flowers like the Morning Glory, Poinsettia and the Easter Lilies. In the last class of the course we were taught how to assemble tiered cakes. We were allowed to bring cakes covered in Fondant or only buttercream (frosting). I did mine with frosting and used Royal Icing Flowers to decorate the cakes.

Royal Icing Flowers (Apple Blossoms) and String work
Easter Lilies made with Royal Icing

The lower cake was two 10 inch cakes and the top one was two 6 inch cakes. Don't ask me what I did with these cakes!!!! :D

The next course starts today, so more cakes to come!

My best cake ever!!

Last Tuesday we had the concluding class of Wilton Course 2. The previous three weeks of class went in making flowers and learning to work with two different kinds of icing other than the regular butter cream (used to frost cakes) At the beginning of each class, our instructor usually points to the last page (or the cover) and says” At the end of this Course, you will be able to take home a cake which looks like this…”

And there is a ring of laughter throughout class,and we are loudly declaring…'oh no way can we do that' :-D I can almost hear my instructor now saying, 'oh yes, you can!'

Well, much that it looked like an impossible feat at the beginning of the course, the last class proved it all wrong. This is how my cake looked at the end of Course 2 :)

All flowers were made using Royal Icing, which is a stiff kind of icing and dries very quickly. Once these flowers are dried, they can be stored for a long long time and can be used on any cake.

The bird was made using Color Flow Icing, which is stiffer than Royal and hardens quicker too. We made two birds but I used only one on my cake.

Top of Cake

A closer look at the flowers.

Daisies & Daffodils

Chrysanthemums & Apple Blossoms

Violets & Pansies

Primroses and Victorian Roses

We also learned the Basket Weave design (on the sides of the cake) and the Rope design (border on top and bottom of cake)

This is my best cake so far. It's so pretty that I don't feel like cutting it :)

It’s Graduation Day!!

Not from school or college but from my Cake Decorating classes at Michael’s. As I had mentioned in my last post on the cakes decorated during these classes, we had one for this class too. It was a grand finish to a fun and knowledgeable course. We got certificates too!

Like all the previous classes, the first hour and forty minutes went in practicing what we are taught that day and also watching our instructor demonstrate few designs. She makes everything seem so easy…really! We learned to make roses out of icing, that was the highlight of the class. The last 20 minutes of the class, we are allowed to decorate our frosted cakes anyway we chose to.

We made Sweet Peas and Roses

Rose made with icing/frosting

I made the cake using the same recipe as last time. You can find the recipe here.

This time I decided to make layers, and used the frosting and grape jam alternately.

I'm sending this over to Bindiya for the event "My Favourite Things :Cakes & Muffins".

Course 1 was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to Course 2 which starts next Tuesday.

Of cakes and delicious frosting

I’ve been baking for a while now, and every time I bake a cake, I frost it well, but after that I’m stuck. I have no idea how to decorate it and make it pretty and presentable. I’ve been hanging onto a few tricks like using chocolate gratings and cut fruit, beyond that….I’m blank as a whiteboard.

So to learn the decorating techniques, I decided to take up the Wilton Cake Decorating Classes at Michaels. I’m done with three classes out of the four and it is definitely well worth it. I joined these classes at the right time, coz I know how to bake and am ready to decorate cakes.

We’ve learned to make the frosting, frost a pre-baked cake and also a few decorating techniques. It isn’t as hard as I thought it would be, I’m thoroughly enjoying myself too. For all the cakes I’ve baked till now, I’ve used a whipped cream frosting, so the usual buttercream frosting is new to me. The one taught in the class is very tasty indeed and is white as snow.

Our instructor suggested we use a box cake mix as that would be easy and inexpensive too. But I'm not a big fan of the cake mix unless its chocolate. I obviously would be sharing the cakes made at class with friends and I wanted them to have a good tasting cake too. So the past classes I've used the basic yellow cake recipe from the "New Baking Book" by Better Homes and Gardens.

Basic Yellow Cake

You will need:

2 ½ cup All purpose Flour
1 ¼ cups Milk
2 ½ tsps Baking powder
½ tsp Salt
2/3 cup butter
1 ¾ cups Sugar
1 ½ tsp Vanilla extract
2 Eggs

Preheat oven to 375F. Grease and lightly flour two 8 in. pans. Stir together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In a mixing bowl beat butter with an electric beater on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add sugar and vanilla, beat until well combined. Add eggs, 1 at a time and beat and beat one minute after each addition. Add flour mixture and milk alternately to beaten mixture, beating on low speed after each addition just until combined. Pour batter into pans.

Bake for 30-35 minutes or until a wooden toothpick comes out clean. Cool layer cakes in a pans for 10 minutes and then invert onto wire racks to cool completely. Frost only after cakes have cooled completely.

These are the cakes from my second and third classes. The third class was last night and it was fun making these clown cakes. I was supposed to add another clown on top but ran out of time and it was too late when I got back home to finish it. I piped the word Clown and called it done:)

From my second class:


From my third class:


I'm looking forward to next class, where we "graduate" from Course 1. And of course we will have a Graduation cake too. More on that after the next class.

I'm sending in the Clown Cake to Bindiya for her event " My Favourite things: Cakes and Muffins"