Back to School: Cake Decorating Class

My sister's birthday was the weekend after the Hubs and I got back from our honeymoon (in September) and I had NO clue what to get my sister for her birthday. Jen loves to bake, and she's pretty good at it, but neither of us could decorate or properly ice a cake to save our lives. Enter a cake decorating class. Sadly it was all booked up in September so we hung out on the waiting list and made it into the November class.

This past Saturday my sister Jen and I, got up bright and early for our cake decorating class in Laguna Beach.

Not the most attractive picture.

I knew I should have brought my own apron! It is so much cuter :)

We were supposed to bring our own 9" round by 3'tall white cake. Neither Jen nor I had a cake pan that would make a 3" tall cake, so we assumed the best solution was to make a layered cake... and so did the girl who answered the phone at the Culinary Institute. We quickly learned when we arrived that we were NOT supposed to bring a layered cake because our teacher was going to teach us how to tort, level and fill out cakes. Information that would have been helpful to know before I made the grossest vanilla filling in the world.

You can also see here that my cake fell apart when I took it out of the pan. Next time I will definitely use parchment paper or wait for the cake to fully cool... or both. My cake also stuck to this plate so I never got to transfer it to the cardboard cake round and doily I purchased.

The first thing we learned was how to tort and level the cake. Our instructor had this awesome tool!

Source

I NEED one of these, it is WAY easier than using a serrated knife! When I use a knife, my cakes alway end up sloped in one direction.

This is the lady across from me's cake torted (cut in half), leveled and with an icing damn to keep her filling inside.

Next we got to icing! I learned how to properly ice a cake and have it look smooth.

You can't even tell how ugly my cake was under all that icing.

Next we practiced different techniques and icing tips on a plastic practice board. My favorite (and I think everyone else's too) were the roses.

The rose on the left is the instructors and the one on the right is mine.

We call made about 5 roses and put them in the fridge to harden up while we learned how to do leaves, vines and sweetpeas. My sweetpeas looked a little more like rose buds to me, so I decided to use them as a part of my border when it came time to decorate our cakes.

There you have it... my very first decorated cake! Watch out world, there will forever be flowers on my cupcakes. You know, if I'm not too lazy to make all the different colored icings and get the tips out.

**Cake decorating class tip: BRING a cake box! I called ahead of time to see if they would be supplying cake boxes for us to bring our decorated cakes home in. I was told yes, but there were no boxes. This was pretty difficult to transport home fully iced.

**We used all Wilton materials in this class, so I can only assume this was very similar to a Wilton class one can take at Michaels.