Let me start off with a warning, BASKETWEAVE IS NOT FOR PEOPLE WITH CARPEL TUNNEL! I haven’t had a flair up in years but after 30 minutes of basketweave piping last night I was in pain, pain, pain. I woke up with my hand swollen up like a baseball mitt! But I endured – it took me 2 hours just to finish the sides.

I started off with this interesting oval shaped cake (cake mix again, the baking part is still not my forte) and applied a crumb coat of light blue icing to the sides and a generous portion to the top.

My icing skills are starting to improve, even though I still had a little bit of a fight with this one.

I took my little blue egg shaped cake to class and began the daunting task of piping the basket weave. Like I said, it took me for-freakin-ever to make it all the way around the entire cake, but I was quite pleased with how it turned out. Although I can easily identify the exact point in which my hand started to give up on me

I ran out of time in class so I had to finish the rest of my cake at home while watching Survivor (kind of fitting).  I added the rope border around the top and a shell border around the bottom.  I think it looks purdy! I’ve got skillz, yo.

After all my piping was done I added on all the royal icing flowers I had made throughout this course, and a few gumpaste daisies, giving it the look of a spring flower basket overflowing with blooms (not really my personal style, but hey, it looks pretty).

Lastly, I piped some green leaves around the flowers and *dum da da dum* VOILA!  My spring basketweave cake was done.

And now that I’ve been looking at it at work all day, it’s time to cut into it and enjoy. Nom

We started the class making fondant roses which came out so much better than the buttercream roses I attempted a few weeks ago. I love the fact that I can play an active role in molding and shaping these roses to make them look exactly how I want them to. I’ll break down the process for ya: First you have to knead your fondant until it’s nice and malleable, then you can work in the coloring…I chose purple. Then you roll it out until it’s super smooth and about 1/16th of an inch thick. Next you use the handy little rose cutter and cut out three shapes like this one:

Once your shapes are cut out you take a weird tool that looks like a plastic pencil with a ball on top and you thin out the edges of the petals and make them kinda wavey.

After you do that to all three of your cutouts you place them one by one onto the rose center shown here:

You can use vanilla extract, water or vodka to brush onto each petal and then you gently curl them up and around the center until they stick where you want them to.

Once all your layers are on and sticking well, you can pinch and pull at the petal to get the look you want, this was my finished creation:

After working on a few roses, it was time to cover my cake with fondant. Again you have to do a lot of kneading and rolling, making sure you have it big enough to cover your entire cake. Then you roll it onto the cake and start smoothing, smoothing, smoothing until you can’t smooth no more! I was pretty damn proud of how my first attempt came out!

Once my cake was covered, I colored more fondant, this time going with a gorgeous blue color that I decided to leave a little bit marbleized cuz I thought it looked cool. I cut out strips for the ribbon and bow and a bunch of stars to applique on my cake and voila!! I love, love, love how it turned out. I was even proud enough to take to work with me today to show my coworkers

I can’t wait to do more with fondant, I see very fun projects in my future!

I think my attempts could be more accurately described as carnations. My icing was way too thick and therefore my flowers came out a little wonky, but I kinda like them.

My classmate’s were better. Bitch. Kidding, of course

We spent the first hour of class making roses and man the f-bombs were dropping like a war zone! They are frustrating little fuckers to make, but it was good for some laughs.

Next we practiced making sweet peas and bows and then it was time to decorate. I made another box mix cake because I wimped out again and it came out a little lopsided. I guess the actual baking part is just not my thing. I placed my red roses in a bunch and added some leaves, then I added black shells along the bottom and black dots around the top.

At the end of class we got our completion certificates. Woot!! Course 2 starts in February…

Now, to give you some background, I am not an exceptional cook (just ask my husband) and for the most part my baking skills extend to slicing into pre-baked cookies and throwing them in the oven. But, I am obsessed with cake decorating shows: Ace of Cakes, Cake Challenge, Cake Boss, etc. You name it, I’ll watch it. For the most part I am fascinated with the art and sculpture aspect that goes into making an extraordinary cake. After months of sitting on my ass and watching these shows the thought finally dawned on me that I should try it (duh!).

I signed up for Wilton’s cake decorating at the local Michaels and had my first class (taught by the lovely and hilarious Rebecca) last Monday evening. The first lesson was basically going over all the essentials and watching the instructor ice a cake (which, of course, she made look soooo easy….PSH!). We were sent home with the homework to make a cake and icing, ice the thing and bring it to the next class. It was perfectly acceptable to bring in a cake made from a box mix (the ONLY kind of cake I have ever made), but no, I had to challenge myself to make a cake from scratch. I found a recipe online and armed myself with all the proper tools and got to work.

I measured out my ingredients, used the fun hand mixer (which doubled as a nice upper arm workout) and poured my batter into the pan. I even used the cool bake even strips that came in my ultra snazzy 101 Piece Tool Caddy. I felt like a true baker. I popped that baby in the oven, set the timer and went off to work on some lampshades. An hour later, the timer goes off and I peek in at my cake and the top is completely cracking…I panic, throw open the oven door shove a toothpick into the top and it seemingly comes out clean. I take it out to cool and an hour later I have a nice concave cake, waaaa! I torte the badboy (look at me learning the fancy words!! It means to slice it in half) and lo and behold the entire center is mush. I was crushed and felt like a complete dumbass, but sucked it up, cut off the good pieces and voila – here is the result of my first ever made-from-scratch cake:

So, so sad.

I quickly realized the error of my ways and whipped up another batch of batter and this time cooked the shit out of the thing with much more favorable results.

I torted it again and iced it up in preparation for last night’s class.

During class we did some practice piping, which is quite easy when you have a pattern to follow, but then it was time to actually decorate the cake.

I opted to do a gel transfer onto the top of my cake with some scroll designs. This means you take a piece of parchment paper and pipe out your design in clear piping gel onto it, then place it on top of your cake and pull the paper back. It gives you a nice stencil to pipe on to. Then I added some drop stars and zigzag to the borders. It came out ok. I had these visions of grandeur when picturing my first decorated cake, assuming that my first attempt would be this perfectly beautiful masterpiece. I had to get over that fast and I think for a first attempt it was pretty damn good!

At least Geoff seemed to like it!

Next week….cupcakes!!