My daughter and I actually did our third decorating class in mid-September but I forgot to blog the photos. (If you missed the first two installments, you can find them here and here.)
Assignment number three was a two layer floral design. If you've been following along, you know one of my challenges has been making my cakes too moist so they fall apart when crumb coating (no matter how water-downed my frosting is). This time I baked the cake just a bit longer and once it cooled I wrapped and refrigerated it. Things I learned:
Wrapping and refrigerating my cakes, along with the extra bake time, definitely helped!
When you do a two layer cake, you do a ring of frosting along the edge before you add your filling. I always wondered how to stop your filling from squirting out! lol My daughter did a chocolate cake with a chocolate fudge filling and I did a spice cake with regular frosting filling.
This is the crumb coated version... I forgot to get a shot of the frosted version before decorating it. Some times I feel a bit rushed by our instructors... and they always look at me funny when I whip out my camera and slow things down. You'll see in the last shots a cornelli lace pattern, made with tip #2. Thin consistency of icing is best for this.
Making Mums is frustrating. My flowers ended up looking like weeds. It's okay, though. I like weeds. I just wish I had more time to practice these. I think, again, that my frosting was too warm from my hand because the petals kept flopping over. We loved using the flower nail though, and we can't wait to try making roses. We started with a blob of frosting on wax paper and used tip #80 for the petals.
Cornelli lace is fun to make. The leaves were made with a #352 tip. Please note my weedy flowers. Actually, I think they remind me of a Yucca plant.
Its fun learning what all the tips do. The shell boarder was with tip #21. We have been keeping our tips in a very fancy ziplock baggy. I'd love to get one of those tip organizers though. We would feel so professional!
Thin your icing for the lace! Here is my daughter's...