1 post tagged “cake decorating”

I've always wanted to take a cake decorating course but never had the time to devote a day each week for four weeks. Apparently other people felt the same so Cake Art Supplies (i wrote here about another class of theirs that i had taken) came up with a four hour Basic Cake Decorating Class in one day. Everything is supplied: icing, tools, and a styrofoam cake dummy, you just show up and decorate! My bff Donna and I showed up at 9am. with our Starbucks in hand, ready to decorate! Each place setting included everything we would need to decorate a cake. There were a total of eight ladies taking the class and our teacher Alice. Alice is also one of three co-owners of Cake Art. Alice was a terrific teacher! She was entertaining, encouraging and easy to follow. Her directions were clear and she was great at giving out little tips and hints along the way. To start, she gave a brief history of Cake Art Supplies (been in business for 45 years!) and how she and her partners came to be the third owners of the business. Next, we got a run down of what we were going to cover in the class and then it was time to start! Alice gave us one rule: No mainlining icing! She told us that a previous student continually sucked icing out of her bag for the entire class!
After explaining how to fit a coupler and a tip into our icing bags it was time to fill them with the buttercream. Alice had already mixed up a huge bowl of fluffy white decorators buttercream for us to use. The first lesson was writing. We inserted a basic round tip as Alice went over the basics of holding the bag at a 45 degree angle and squeezing in a smooth even motion to create letters. I chose to do a loose handwriting style as i practiced on my parchment paper, you can see in the pic above. The next lesson was creating a shell border. We changed our tip to the star and began piping a shell border around the perimeter of our cardboard cake round. Once we mastered this step we were ready for our next lesson.
Each student got to pick a color and tint our own buttercream. I chose pink and my friend Donna chose yellow. We then traded our cake rounds for our cake dummys as Alice demonstrated how to pipe a basketweave on the sides of a cake. We began by measuring out 1 inch increments around the top of our cake and marking them with toothpicks. Using a round tip we piped icing in a straight line from the base up to the top where the toothpick was inserted. We piped another verticle line from base to top of the second toothpick and again on the third toothpick. We then measure in inch-increments down the sides of the cake to give six horizontal rows. Switching to the basketweave tip we piped from left to right starting at the first line and across the second line and touching the third. We skipped the second row down and started on the third row repeating the same process until we finished three horizontal stripes. We piped three more verticle lines and filled in, connecting with the previous horizontal basketweave. Our next lesson was stringwork. I used Donna's yellow icing to do my stringwork, it looks like swags of ribbon hanging on the side of the cake! We deterimined our starting point and then piped with even pressure pulling out and straight across to our ending point, left to right. Alice explained how it was important to keep consistent even pressure when piping or the swag will break or be uneven. I thought this would look so cute on the side of a birthday cake! I continued my stringwork incorporating a second swag to give a more fancy look. You can see this is the pic above. We then switched to a leaf tip and some green icing. We piped leaves along the top of the cake. Again the process was an even squeeze-and-release action. We switched our leaf tip back to a star and created drop flowers by holding our bag at a 90 degree angle touching the cake or parchment and using a squeeze-clockwise-turning motion. The final lesson was buttercream roses. By this time our icing was getting pretty warm and soft so our roses were melting all over! I think the key to piping buttercream roses is to start with very cool icing and pipe quickly. You can see my melting rose on top of my cake in the pic above. We also practised with the grass tip which creates a terrific grass-like look on the top of a cake. This was achieved using a 90 degree angle touching the cake, squeeze, pull up and release. At one point Alice brought out a cake she had baked and demonstrated torting (cutting layers) and filling the layers with icing as well as creating a crumb coat and final coat of icing for a smooth even look. The time went by so fast! We all had a great time, learned a lot and we got to bring our cake dummies and leftover icing with the tips and couplers home with us! I am looking forward to my next class at Cake Art Supplies!