Here's the cake pic .... please feel free to giggle at it with me!
Lesson #1: "Stars", "Dots", and "Curvy Lines"
(*snicker, snicker*)
Does this bring back memories to anyone else of my class on felting? (more infamously known as "The Sheep Shit Hat Class"??). Because it does to me!!
But in my defense, the cake just looks especially lopsided and such in this picture. I swear it isn't that bad in real life (no, no ... REALLY! :))
The cake decorations on the other hand .... well, for that, sadly, I have no defense! (hehe)
The good news is ... folks here at work didn't seem to care. Because I put the cake out in the break room at 10:07 am looking like this ....
... and, quite literally, by 10:20 am ... the cake looked like this! (not bad for a small office of about 20 people and with no announcement from me that there was cake available!)
Hi there! Welcome to We R Piggies, Inc.
So now if there are no reported food poisonings around here in the next hour or so (*fingers crossed*), I'll consider cake #1 a success! Whoo hoo!
9 comments:
Your cake looks great! I am quite impressed!
You shouldn't be snickering at all...we all have to start somewhere, you know! As you practice it will get easier.
Oh, and just to give you a little more confidence, your teacher unleashed some of the hardest stuff on you - dots and wavy lines are hard! I still have to do trial runs sometime just to get the pressure right so that they come out looking nice.
Do you have a small offset spatula? Sometimes that can help with geting the frosting a bit more even around the edges (I so wish I could show you myself how to achieve the effect) thus curing your lopsided look...
Great job!
Oh, and one other tip I forgot to mention - if you use freezer paper on your base, you can wipe up any little frosting dollops that end up on your board. It's also good sometimes to put little waxed paper strips underneath and then just pull them out when you're done frosting and smoothing things up. :)
Okay...back to prepping for my VIP job interview today. It's the perfect one so I must do well!
You get an 'A' just for taking the class! Bravo! (and I'm sure it was delicious)
Okay, so the cake has officially and completely met its demise. The work peeps polished it off a little after 1pm. Yep, it's official ... we are pigs! :)
And MeLissa ... thanks for the tidbits (errr, but what's a "small offset spatula??". I think all that extra frosting was on the board due to all the sliding around the cake did on the way to the class. Of course, NOW the teacher tells me that I coulda put a dollop of frosting on the board and THEN the cake so the cake would stick! Now why didn't she hand out that little gem of wisdom BEFORE I needed it ...lol. Anyway, here's hoping next week goes a bit smoother! (AND here's hoping your interview went EXCELLENT!!)
I think your cake looks so cute I like flowers...it also looks tasty...mmm.. now i want cake... you should send me some lol...
Oh geez...I wouldn't have even thought to tell you about the dab of icing under the cake either unless of course I was teaching your class, but frankly, I would have had you ice the cake in my presence so I could give you some uber important tips (such as putting the dab of frosting on the cake board)...I like making things easy for people, though. ;)
Your instructor did teach you the tricks of putting wax paper in your cake pans, trimming the top of your layers so they're even and freezing the layers before frosting didn't she? I sure hope so...it makes things so much easier and it really makes for a moist cake, too!
At any rate, you definitely want to invest in a large and a small off-set spatula if you haven't yet...and here's a couple of links to them (you should be able to find these at Michael's or a cake supply store quite easily):
small:
http://www.cooking.com/products/shprodde.asp?SKU=139565
large:
http://www.cooking.com/products/shprodde.asp?SKU=139432
There's also a middle size which I don't own. :) Any other questions, just ask!
Oh, and if you want to really have fun decorating a cake, try to do one with just edible materials (like candies, etc.) That was my favorite year in 4-H...they wouldn't actually let us use tips and bags until we'd mastered the process of using other materials. :)
Happy decorating! (And, the job interview is totally up in the air, by the way - I detest phone interviews). I have a "real" one tomorrow which should be much easier to navigate.
Sorry for the plethora of post length comments...
want to make me a birthday cake? it was officially yesterday, but the friend who made my cake...well, it didn't quite turn out as expected. let's say bundt pan, no icing, bland flavor (she'd agree, as she did last night).
i like lemon. :)
Happy Belated Birthday, Shannon!!!!!
Sorry about your cake. A bundt cake with NO icing?? That ain't right. Did you say that was a "friend" ... or "foe".. who made that for you??? :)
MeLissa - thanks for the links. The cake decorating kit did come with the small spatula I believe. So far that has met all my needs. (of course, a ball of acrylic yarn and size 15 needles met all my knitting needs at first too ... so ... there is that! :))
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