Course 1, Class 3

In this class we began by learning the center petal of the Wilton rose. I managed to get it in the end, but in the 2 weeks I have before our final class (the instructor is out of town next week) I should probably practice so I can get it right every time. Then we moved onto shell borders, then large dots and hearts. After that we learned the drop flower and the swirl flower. Finally, we learned the clown. I am a little disappointed that there was an entire cake dedicated to this clown because I think there are a lot of other things they could have taught us. Oh well.

I made a bright colored cake this week. I tried to get the green a lime green, and then my decorations are royal blue. Everyone else did white bases with pale colors. My final cake will be a lot less obnoxious. But this was clowns after all. What is more obnoxious than a clown?

I added a shell border to the top and bottom, and also added the flowers that we learned in class. Oh yeah, and my clowns have really long arms.

Course 1, Class 2

Tonight was my second Wilton class. Our homework was to bake an 8 inch round cake, and ice it with light blue icing for class. We also had to make up hard consistency icing to practice making the Wilton rose, medium consistency icing to practice stars and lines, thin consistency icing to practice writing, and then medium consistency icing in red, yellow, green, blue, and purple for our cake. It is amazing how many hours that actually takes. I did, however, get to use my trusty mixer a lot which always makes me happy.

I decided to make a yellow cake and filled it with raspberry preserves. I learned one thing while making the cake. I thought I could skip buying the Wilton baking spray and just grease the pan instead. It definitely did not come out of the pan easily though, so I guess I'll be picking up some of the Wilton spray.

In class we did a lot of learning and practicing how to use different tips to ice shapes. Then we started to ice our rainbows and fill them in. I ended up having to do the majority of the decorating at home because we ran out of time. I learned a few things while doing the decorating.

First, if you put a tie over the end of your decorating bag and tie it too tight, there is too much pressure on the end of your bag. The bag will then explode at the bottom and the tip will shoot out into your cake causing a big dent in the base icing. And of course this big dent can't happen when you are decorating the back of the cake. Nope, right in the front.

Second lesson learned is that if I decide to be ambitious and create a border of stars around the bottom of the cake, I should start in the back. This way when I get back to where I began the border, if the sizes and placement of the stars are a bit off, it is not quite as noticable.

All in all though, I think I'm pleased with how the cake came out. I know that if I were to do the same one a second time, it would come out much better. Oh and the plan is to take it to work tomorrow, so I added Happy Tuesday to it. Because Tuesday is happy. Because it is no longer Monday. So without further ado, my cake:

Wilton Cake Baking Classes

I'm going to use this as an easy way to keep all of my cake pictures and share them with people who have said they want to see them.

I started taking the Wilton cake decorating Course 1 at Michaels on Monday, August 3. The first class was just an introduction to the tools we would be using (and needed to purchase) and a quick overview on how to level, tort, and fill a cake, along with how to ice it while trying to get the icing as smooth as possible.

One thing I learned was that if you sign up for the Michaels weekly email, you get a 50% off coupon that you can print off as many times as you want. It does expire though, so you may have to sign up another email address to get a new one. Let's just say that Michael Stratford (who apparently lives on the street next to ours) and Jessica Jones (who apparently lives on my parent's street in a made up number house) signed up for the newsletter. Of course the coupon is only good for one item at a time, so I think I visited all 3 Michaels locations near my house and work at least 3 times each over the last week. But I think I'm all set for supplies now.