Tracy's Birthday Cake!

This cake wasn't as time consuming to decorate as you may think. I used 5 different bags of buttercream for each star tip color and just went around and added each color. It was fun!

This Week's Cakes!! (Sorry for the poor formatting)

This Week's Cakes & Cupcakes

Cake Decorating: How do I Cover a Cake with Fondant?

As you may know, I have wanted to be a baker for some time now. I have taken the Wilton classes and even the commercial baking class at the local community college. I strive to go to Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island once I finish my degree at Fairleigh Dickinson University to get a degree in Baking & Pastry (I’ve already been accepted!). Recently, one of my yoga instructors had told me I should really try to start selling my cakes or get the word passed around (we all know that word of mouth advertising can be very beneficial). I took her advice and have had my first cake sale (and many since then!)! I must say that I was very pleased with the cake and how it turned out. So, since I was so pleased, I thought I would give you a few hints as to how to cover a cake with fondant (since I thought I did that pretty successfully this time).

          

This part can be the most stressful when decorating a cake because you never quite know how gravity will work and if the fondant will tear. Usually, if there is a tear or a problem area, that is where the back is or where the decorations go—it is funny how this is what is used to figure out the front and back of a cake!

             

You can find a video tutorial for covering cakes with fondant here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vecmy4nKT-A

You can also read the Wilton tutorial: http://www.wilton.com/decorating/fondant/rolled-fondant.cfm

The Wilton way is slightly different than the demonstration in the video, so I will go into detail about that:

Note: Make sure that the frosting atop your cake is not fully crusted so that the fondant has something to stick to.

1. Roll out fondant on “Fondant Fun” Wilton mat. Cover mat with vegetable shortening (like Crisco) to ensure that fondant does not stick. Make sure you cover more than necessary because I find that I always roll out more than I anticipate (and it is better to roll out a few inches more to give yourself some wiggle room). 
2. Next, once the fondant is rolled to about a ¼ inch thickness, place your cake on a pedestal of sorts, I usually buy the big jar of Crisco, so this works nicely to set my 8-inch round cake on. 
3. Place the fondant over your cake—this is the scary part! Gently place it, don’t just plop it down.
4. Make sure that all sides of the cake will be covered by fondant. If not, then gently move the fondant around until it fits perfectly.
5. As in the video, use a fondant smoother to start smoothing out the sides GENTLY! (With placing the cake on a pedestal of sorts, it is easier for the excess fondant to fall rather than having it get bunched up on the sides or lie flat on a table.
6. Start cutting excess fondant off the side of the cake. In Wilton we use a tapered spatula rather than a pizza cutter.  
7. Continue to smooth the fondant with the fondant smoother to ensure a nice even consistency atop the cake.
8. Tada! You have covered your first round cake! 

Since it is a bit more tricky to cover a square cake with fondant, you can view a tutorial here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5yrYZgIXr8

In depth review of Wilton Course 4 (continued)

Hello Cake Decorators!
This is a continued  review on the newest Wilton Course #4: Advanced Gumpaste Flowers. (See the beginning of my review here.)

I was really excited to sign up for this class at the local AC Moore, and even more excited that I would have the same teacher as I did for the other three courses, and also be in the same class as a woman I took the last two courses with (flowers & cake design and gum paste & fondant). Aside from the people, I was super excited about the course, who doesn’t love those crazy-real looking flowers on cakes? I always have loved them!

During the course we made petals for all kinds of flowers (like a lily) and some different types of leaves as well (lily leaves, ivy leaves). We also learned how to make the briar rose, along with tiny blossoms, and some other nice looking flowers.

One of my favorite parts of the course was class 3 when we learned how to color our gum paste with Wilton’s Color Dust and Food Writer markers. This made our lily petals look so real (you can see a photo of it in a previous blog post here)! I loved the outcome, and it was really easy. The color dust is something I’ve wanted to learn how to do, but have never tried (except for one horrible time when I made gum paste carnations the wrong color and had to color them—so I used the liquid coloring method, of adding vodka to the color dust and straight-up painting the finished flower shapes. It was…interesting. The gum paste got a little soft in places, but overall they ended up looking really nice, despite the vodka smell).

Being that this was the first month that the course is being offered, I feel like there are some kinks to be worked out. The kit is really nice and the products that come with it are good. It’s also good that Wilton takes into account that you have tons of stuff from the past four courses, so you can just use that stuff in place of buying new things. But, one thing is time. There seems to be a lot of time left over because we would finish making something and need it to dry, so often we just sat there or had about 45 minutes left before the course was supposed to be finished.

The other thing about this course is I feel like I haven’t actually make anything throughout the first 3 weeks. A lot of the flowers are just pieces on wire, waiting for their assembly in class 4. You don’t really have anything to show for the class besides a gerbera daisy (that is huge and not attached to a wire) and some other flowers that will later be put into a bouquet (like the briar rose and ivy, along with the blossoms). I feel like a lot of time is spent putting the floral tape around the wires, rather than focusing on the cake decorating. This is a good aspect though, I guess even though I don’t like it, because it shows us how to use different mediums with our decorating. The other thing I don’t like is we don’t decorate anything in our final class! Wilton is notorious for having students decorate a final cake in class 4. I feel like Course 4 is disjointed from the rest because we will be used lots of floral tape to assemble bouquets, not being creative in our cake decorating.

I would give the class 4.5 stars out of 5. There are some quirks and some aspects I was surprised about, but I do enjoy the course and the flowers that we learned how to make. They are beautiful, and I think in time it will be a good course. I’m just happy that there is another Wilton course beyond what has been in place for years!