Since last I reported on my adventures in becoming a cake diva, I’ve finished Wilton Method class #2, Flowers and Cake Design–and the cake to the left is my final project.  The flowers on top are made in royal icing, which I told you lovely readers all about in my Part 5 post–they’re the product of a couple weeks of cake decorating “homework” making oodles of edible blooms that will keep indefinitely, ready to toss on whatever baked good emerges from my busy kitchen.  For the final class I showed up with a box full–and I do mean full–of flowers to choose from, and I decided to live dangerously and work in chocolate buttercream instead of the plain old vanilla buttercream I’ve used for previous cakes.  This was a recommendation from my instructor, since we would be working on the basketweave pattern and it looks pretty snazzy in chocolate.

I agree, the chocolate looks snazzy and heaven knows it tastes fabulous…but lemme tell ya, it can be a real you-know-what to work with.  My icing came out a bit stiffer than usual with the chocolate added, and as you can probably tell even if you have no experience in it, that basketweave takes a Very.  Long.  Time.  No way around it–it’s a pattern that takes patience and precision, and most likely at least one break.  I’m sure if I did it all the time I’d get used to it, but my hand was sore the next day from squeezing the bag…plus midway through the pattern, I accidentally poked through said bag with my pinky finger.  This would only happen to a person of my profound klutziness, and meant I had to refill a new bag and start the process again–which did give me the aforementioned break, but not the one I would have liked.  Regardless, I really like the pattern, especially for cakes you plan on flower-ing within an inch of their little cake lives, and it looks super-impressive.  I was short on time in class due to my pastry bag malfunction, so if I had the chance I’d have bordered the bottom too, but no worries–I was satisfied with the end result.  I also looooove the way the colors look on the dark chocolate–totally would use that combo again.

FYI, if you’re thinking of trying the basketweave yourself, two tips: firstly, don’t set out on this adventure without checking out instructions.  You’ll need to mark the cake to keep your pattern even, and there’s a definite method to following the pattern that you can’t shortcut…so do yourself a favor and if you’re not about to take the class, read the instructions first.  Secondly, our class lesson plan recommended using a star-shaped tip for the pattern, but I personally dig Wilton tip no. 47, a tip that’s designed for this pattern specifically.  You can use either the flat or serrated side for your pattern, and it doesn’t leave so much icing on the cake that your guests go into sugar overload.

So now I’m onto class #3, Gum Paste and Fondant.  If you’ve watched even one of those of-the-moment cake shows on TV, you know that fondant has been having a moment for several years now, despite the fact that a lot of people don’t think it tastes good and it almost always drives up the price of your cake.  But I think the appeal comes from the darn near flawless look of those cakes, and the huge array of things you can do with it, especially when you toughen the decorations up with a little gum paste.  Again we’re using a pre-made boxed fondant for the class projects, though you can certainly make your own (I’m planning to try this recipe for marshmallow fondant at some point).  However, it really helps if you know what the boxed stuff feels like before you try it on your own–once you know the consistency you’ll be able to tell if your own batch is working out the way you want it to.  We won’t be covering a cake until our last class, but we started out with this fabulous fondant-and-gum-paste bow.  Putting things like this together is comparable for me to working with edible Play-Doh–lots of molding and bending to what you want, rather than the delicate balance of piping icing with a bag.  It does take–you guessed it–the patience of letting things dry and do what they need to without rushing the process, but honestly I’ve come a long way in ridding myself of antsy-ness in these matters.

So for the next two weeks it’s back to flowers–but these will be gum paste sugar flowers.  Thin, delicate, and realistic-looking is the goal with these bad boys–I’ll be back soon with plenty of pics!

I haven’t regaled you all with the tales of my second Wilton Method cake decorating class in a little while, so here’s an update for you: Flowers.  Flowers.  More flowers.

Three of my favorites--daffodils, violets, and the "Wilton rose."

Our last two classes have consisted of learning a whopping seven different flowers, all in royal icing, and practicing them till our little fingers fall off.  (Well, not literally.)  The royal icing, which is stiffer than buttercream, dries to a hard consistency that allows you to not only get great detail in your flowers, but also to keep them indefinitely.  That’s right, indefinitely–so you can make a whole ton of flowers and save them, preferably in a container where they can breathe a little bit, until you’re ready to place them on the artfully crafted confection of your choice.  In class we learn the flower, then make as many as we can in the time allotted–so you get pretty familiar with the method and have the instructor by your side in case you totally choke.  Plus you get all the valuable chit-chat time with your classmates, who in the event you do totally choke, will help you feel a whole lot better.

Some of my homework--rosettes and apple blossoms.

We even have homework in this class–the lesson plan calls for you to make a whole bunch of icing for class that you almost always don’t use up in the practice time, so rather than letting all that sugary loveliness go to waste, our instructor recommends taking the leftovers and making as many flowers as you can out of it.  After all, they’re not about to go bad, and who doesn’t want that swell little cache of flowers around for whenever you whip up a dessert?  It’s certainly handy, and it makes you look like you spent way more time on those brownies from a box when you plop a little violet on top.  The more challenging thing for me is trying to find time to make the little buggers–my schedule has been so jam-packed with holidays and birthdays, not to mention all the other pesky necessities like laundry and groceries, that it’s been a little tough to find time.  I find I do my best work however as I watch the terribly trashy evening television that I so adore.  I turn on whatever Real Housewives franchise I’m loving at the moment (though I’m sure few of them would take the time to dirty their manicures with such pursuits), and giggle as I craft.  Can’t drink and make flowers though…that just gets messy.

Lilies--you store them in an egg carton to keep the shape. How very resourceful.

So safely parked in front of the tube, I have been practicing to my little heart’s content and developing quite the collection of edible art over the last couple weeks.  Everything needed to make the flowers–besides the icing and the time–comes in the kit you purchase at the beginning of class, except for the little wax-paper squares that you make the flowers on (with the exception of the lilies at left–those are made on special foil squares used in candy making, and they come in the kit).  If you buy the ones from Wilton, which are a great size and texture, they come in packs of 50 for $1.99–but let me tell you, with so many flowers to make and so much icing with which to craft them, those suckers go FAST.  Eventually I started cutting my own squares of wax paper (it’s just wax paper after all) after running out of squares and shouting in frustration one too many times.

Apple blossoms and primroses.

So tonight, many of these lovely flowers will find a home on a cake–the final cake project for class #2.  We’ll be learning the fine art of the basketweave, which I’ll be putting to good use on the outside of my cake, and then festooning the top with many of these fab little florals.  The cake is cooling away on the counter as we speak…and much to my husband’s delight, it’s a chocolate one this time.  Perhaps most ironically, it didn’t matter to me all that much which kind of cake I’ve made–in fact, I truthfully haven’t eaten very much cake since this whole project began.  After spending so much time with it, sometimes I’m not even hungry anymore when the cake is finished.  Who knew making desserts was such a great way to diet?  But don’t worry–there’s plenty of folks around to make sure the leftovers don’t go unloved.

It’s been almost a month since my first foray into the world of cake decorating, and if you were tuned in for the last round, you know that I’ve been plotting for the second class since midway through the first.  I learned so much (not just about dessert, but about my own patience) in the last class that I absolutely couldn’t wait to get rolling on the more advanced classes–and fortunately for me, the fine people at Joann made it quite easy for me by running some fabulous specials on the advanced Wilton Method classes they offer there.  Last weekend I signed up for both Flowers and Cake Design (the class I’m now taking) and Gum Paste and Fondant (the class I’ll be taking in May) for HALF OFF!  And when we’re talking about $45 classes, this is a huge deal for a domestic diva such as myself.  (By the way, if you haven’t taken the first class or are ready to jump in on one of the more advanced classes, they have some great half-off and reduced-price specials on all the classes coming up over the next few months…just check out the class section of the website for info.)

So last night I boldly entered the world of the second Wilton Method class, Flowers and Cake Design.  This time around my class is smaller, just four ladies total, but the instructor is the same as the last class–and since she is both talented and hilarious, it’s a win all around.  The instructor told me at the end of the last class that this one was one of her favorites to teach, so naturally when the instructor says that it’s easy to be excited.  However, this class covers a lot of new territory and products I’ve never even seen, let alone eaten.  One such product would be the completely unappetizingly-named gum paste.

Most folks are pretty familiar with rolled fondant, especially given the proliferation of baking TV shows out there that have contributed to its popularity, but I can honestly say that I wasn’t really sure exactly what gum paste was prior to these classes.  So I did a little Google-ing to investigate, and it turns out that it’s been used by confectioners since medieval times.  Who the heck would have thunk THAT, right?  Basically gum paste is a sugar dough with gums added for flexibility, so it becomes super flexible and pliable–kind of like an edible Play-Doh, but without any real flavor or color (though you can add some if you want, but only using special products).  Because of the sugar content, gum paste decorations dry hard and keep for quite a while.  It’s also a bit stronger than fondant alone, so you can mix it with fondant to make some nifty decorations–which we did in the first class.

Back in the day, if you wanted to tinker with gum paste you needed to make your own, which appears to be a time-consuming and messy process.  Luckily for the class, Wilton now makes ready-to-use gum paste that comes out of the bag ready to use–but be forewarned if you use it, it is highly temperamental.  It’s easiest to shape it if you put a little vegetable shortening on your fingers first, and you have to work fast–it dries out way faster than you think.  You can tint it yourself with icing colors, or you can do what we did and mix in some already-colored fondant–which once again Wilton handily makes in a multipack of various color combinations.  It may appear that all these shortcuts are taking “the easy way out,” but I have to say it makes the whole class a lot lower-stress.  I’m not saying I may not try to make any of this stuff from scratch somewhere down the line, but the point of these classes is accessibility to people of all skill levels.  You’re supposed to have fun and not get gum paste-driven performance anxiety, so I think this is a sensible way to approach what could be a deal-breaker for some people.

The first flowers we made were the super-adorable daisy-like creations known as “button flowers,” thusly named because they’re made with a handy-dandy flower press that gives them texture and a super cute button center.  I am totally in love with these cute little buggers, and they’re really not hard to make at all–I just rolled out the gum paste/fondant mixture to about 1/8 of an inch thickness, put it in the press and poof–adorable flower magic.  Again, you do have to be awfully careful about the drying-out factor, but a little vegetable shortening on the board goes a long way, and a mix of powdered sugar and cornstarch keeps them from sticking in the mold.  (Wilton includes a puff-like contraption in the class kit, but it mostly puffs in your face…which is hilarious, but an alternative method would be worth pursuing.)

We also made the very cute and delicate pansies in the picture at left, which are a little trickier but still really cute when they’re completed.  The dough has to be extra-thin for these guys, and you cut them out with a cookie cutter sort of contraption–the ruffly petals are achieved by rolling the edges with a special ball-shaped tool on a piece of foam.Then you attach a couple more petals and the center loop with an adhesive made from leftover gum paste and water, and let them dry as shown in special drying cups to give them a rounded shape–but if that’s too much on the accessory side for you, you can set them on wax paper in a muffin tin or other concave-shaped holder until they dry.  It can take up to 24 hours for either flower to dry completely, but when I checked mine out this morning, they seemed pretty good to go.

So that was class number one–overall a blast as always, mostly since there’s a sort of fellowship that develops when taking on something so utterly foreign to the normal day-to-day.  There’s a lot less baking in this class, which means less baked goods for hubby…but we can’t let those adorable flowers go to waste, now can we?