So my daughter and I decided to take cake decorating class. We had our first class a few weeks ago and had a great time. Our biggest challenge was crumb coating which was pretty crumby. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.) But as I told my kiddo, we can only get better.
This past week we had out second class. We headed over with our cakes and frosting already prepared. Assignment number two: a car cake. Things I learned:
Although I think paste food dyes are great, these little bottles rock. They are easy to add to frosting and mix colors without a big mess.
Don't use a plastic spoon to mix your frosting. It will break.
Don't fill up your decorating bag too much. As you work, the warmth of your hand warms it up and it doesn't come out of the tip as well. Or, work faster then I did! lol
Making a basic car shape is almost as easy as a butterfly. Cut a round in half, crumb coat the tops and stick them together. The shaping was fun and easy with a sharp serrated knife. Unfortunately it was at this stage that I could tell I was going to have problems with my cake. Apparently I make my cakes too moist. I had some problems in class one and this time was even worse. My cake was so moist it was falling apart. I need to figure out how to make a moist but firm cake. A goal for future classes. I'm learning...
After mixing our colors and doing a crumb coating, we added windows, doors and hoods first by marking the lines with a toothpick then piping the white frosting on top with a #7 tip.
We made stars with a #17 tip. That was fun! This is also when I realized after awhile that my frosting was warming up too much from my grip and started to come out without a nice star shape. Note to self, only fill the bag up halfway then refill.
We finished off the cakes with a #48 tip bumper, donuts for wheels and M&M's for the head and tail lights. The antennae was a piece of spaghetti that we stuck in our #7 tip and squeezed frosting all over it. My daughter made the blue one and I made the purple one.
I knew when I first cut my cake in half that my cake was going to give me problems. It was just crumbling. I managed to crumb coat it by thinning out my frosting but it just wasn't sticking very well. By the time we got home my poor car was falling apart. I was tempted to leave you all with the photo above but the reality is that I am learning so you guys will see the good, bad and ugly. Here is the ugly...