Night One of Cake Decorating

This past weekend mom and I signed up for a cake decorating class that is on Thursday nights for two hours during the month of April. Last night we had our first class, and it was simply amazing! Mom and I were the second pair to arrive, and the class consisted of only five of us. We established a rapport with everyone rather quickly -- we were all so excited to learn more about decorating cakes! After brief introductions, what is your name and why do you want to take this class, the instructor demonstrated how to properly prepare a cake: cut off the mound, cut it through the center to give two separate layers, how to fill the cake, and frost it. This was just your basic cake preparation and frosting, and we learned such valuable information! Bottom side is always up because it is flat. When filling a cake make a dam with frosting around the outside so the filling (strawberry for her) doesn't ooze out the sides. Then when the top is put back on you fill in the middle with more frosting so that when you frost the sides there are not any gaps between the two layers of cake. Then we learned how to frost quickly with different utensils. Her cake turned out so nicely, and she did it really fast! I can't wait to try out my own cake (I'll get to do it next Thursday!).

After learning about how to assemble a cake, we used our tools to create stars. The kit we had to buy has these great practice boards and examples that you can put under plastic so you can practice. Here's what I came up with!

I was a little nervous about making these stars at first -- they don't seem hard, and they really weren't, but I had never done them before. Turns out, I'm not so bad at it! :) I had a lot of fun trying to make the perfect little stars. It was relatively simple right up until the point where you have to stick all the stars together so that there is no cake showing. This is done for character cakes. Mine are pretty spacey. It was fun anyway.

This is the first cookie I decorated after our practice session. I need to work on spacing, but the stars are pretty! And it's a lot of fun. I could make little stars all day long.

Hard at work getting those stars right! The others were all busy making all kinds of shapes -- lopsided hearts and stars, snowflakes. I stuck to just getting them out there and practicing the technique. It was a blast. And then everyone would ask to see your work, and then they would show you what they did. It was a lot of fun. Here's what mom was working on: 

She tried all the fancy-pants patterns, and they turned out really well! When we got home that night mom and I went back to work finishing the rest of the cookies she had made earlier in the day. Here are a few that we made:

I made a spider!

And a heart.

Mom made smiley faces and swirls.

And she made a really good star!

The class was so much fun! Both mom and I can't wait to get back there next Thursday to replicate the cake putting-together process! She made it seem so easy, and I wonder if it will be so.... Next week shall tell!

Today I ate of the delicious cookies that mom made. It was heavenly!