Cake #2 - Flowers and Shells

The class this week was all about drop flowers, making faces, clowns and the shell border. I had my cake all ready to go, so surprisingly this class there was very little decorating left to do - Add a shell border and stick the premade flowers on. Yet it was tedious work. I now know why Laura said to make about 100 flowers for this cake. About 30 of my flowers broke before I got them on my cake, and another 10 broke while being applied to the cake.

Sigh.

I did manage to get my flowers on, and stay on. But I had to mourn the loss of about 40 flowers in the process. I did learn something however - I figured my flowers had dried too quickly when making them, so when I added the center dot to stabilize it, the icing had already dried too much to really stick. So I think if I were to do these again, I would make sure I had both icing colors ready to go and once the flowers were made, I would add the center. I think then I wouldn't have lost as many flowers.

Anyways, my second cake:

I was actually really pleased with how this cake turned out. the icing is a pale pink, and I think shows up better in my previous post. The flowers were very bright and spring-like. And totally a girl's cake.

Too bad my husband had to take this one to the office... full of guys.. full of computer geek guys..

As you can see on the side of my cake, the chocolate cake crumbled when I applied the icing, and I got some crumbs on the outside. Something I need to work on with chocolate. Next time I think I will do a thin layer of icing, then let to dry and apply another layer on top.

We also learned how to make clowns. Yes, those scary clowns. I am going to practice them over the next week and will show pictures here. In the end, they were kind of cute. But I still wouldn't put them on my cake!!
Next week is our final class for Course One. We will learn the final steps to making the Wilton Rose, and will make a rose cake complete with bow. It is not the type of cake I would normally like to do, but I can see that learning how to make the rose properly will come in handy if I decide to pursue a side business in decorating. Too many wedding cakes with simple flowers!

But for now... practice practice practice!!