Night Three of Cake Decorating

On my third night of cake decorating I learned how to make different types of flowers. First though we were instructed to bring pre-made cupcakes (I brought the leftover Red Velvet cupcakes from Sue's shower). She then showed us how to frost the cupcakes. For this particular design we used a star tip and a 10 inch featherweight piping bag with the white Wilton recipe for criscocream. You can use one of the nails the Decorating Basics kit comes with (and your cupcake might in fact fly off of it and go splat), or you can set it in front of you. The point is to cover all the showing cake with frosting, or "the good stuff" as defined by Rita, our instructor. I personally like a little bit of the cake showing; it shows the pretty contrast between the cake and the frosting, especially if you have a red cake and white frosting! But, to each her own. When ready, hold the piping bag at a ninety degree angle, and start at the edge of your cake. Make a complete circle around the edge of the cake, and when you come back around go up slightly on the layer you already made. Keep circling around until the cake is covered. When finishing, stop the pressure on the bag and lift off. If you keep pressure going you will not have a neat little star shape. It should look like this:

Once our six cupcakes were properly frosted we learned how to make shaggy mums, drop flowers, rosettes, and shell boarders. These were all so much fun! Here is a picture of the first flower that we made:

Crazy flowers that were fun, but I will probably never make again.

Mine ended up turning out kind of funky because the frosting was so stiff--it kept sticking to the tip, and refused to let go! Rita told us to not ever use the stiff frosting recipe because it's more like sticky paste, and completely non-malleable. The medium consistency is better, but ours definitely needed to have more water added to it! Anyway, they were fun to make, and everyone really had a ball making these. The one woman had a wilted flower. Instead of the "petals" sticking up, they were sticking to the bottom, and really did look like dead flowers. She worked hard though, and got some beautiful flowers at the end. 

Drop flowers, rosettes, and leaves

The next thing we did was learn how to make a drop flower. You use one of the star tips, press it to the cake, use enough pressure so that the frosting makes lines in the shape of a flower, stop pressure, and finally, lift off! This gives you a lovely flower. With one of the smaller round tips, you can add a dot of frosting to the middle, and make a gorgeous flower! The technique is basically the same for the other variation of the drop star. The only difference is to extend your arm so that it is parallel to your body. Once you have the flower shape starting to form, you turn your arm so that it is perpendicular to your body. this make a little ruffle to your flower. Again, you can use a round tip to make the center of your flower. 

Rosettes and leaves

Rosettes were very similar to the motions of frosting the cupcake. You make a blob in the center of your potential flower, then swing your arm up, to the right, and then finally swinging around to the left. It makes a cute little rosette!

This class was so much fun. I think making leaves was my favorite. The look rather difficult to make, and the tip seems ominous, but it's so easy! I can definitely see myself making these flowers and leaves again. 

I think I added all but one flower to this cupcake. A hodgepodge of everything I learned!