Skillz, Part 2

Oh my gosh, what have I been doing? Everybody remember Heather from my cake deco class? Well we really did have a part 2, the next week, but it has just taken me three months to get around to posting it! But those buttercream roses were such a pain that I do definitely want credit for learning to make them.

So. In part 1 we did cupcakes and various beginner piping styles. In part 2 we took on cakes. Torting. Damming.
Filling.
And the blasted crumb coat. I see the purpose but have a hard time justifying it for all the wasted frosting. So much wasted frosting!


Then the icing. Same as crumb coat, only thicker and more perfect. And Heather's special technique for smoothing it perfectly to look like fondant.

And finally, the buttercream roses. Which took about an hour to learn and were so hard. I will never take them for granted again. I managed to get about three decent ones. Plus some piped flowers I'd made ahead of time, and my cake actually looked pretty good.

Wow, telling about it goes a lot faster than doing it, go figure.
So it was a great night and I'm really glad to have gone through the training. But the reality is, I am not going into this professionally. And I am not a perfectionist in this kind of way. So I really won't be doing my cakes like this very much. The frosting is very dense, and it takes a TON, much of which goes to waste. I can't get over that. Plus I like soft, swirly frosting, or ooey, drippy glaze as much as anything.

But in August my niece turned 8 and requested a "Littlest Pet Shop" vanilla cake, so I figured I could do it. Got some LPS toys at Target, colored some icing to match. Putting the cake together was like torture because I had to go back and re-read and try to remember all the instructions. It took forever! So after all that I kept the piping pretty simple. Even so it was several hours. So while I might not actually be skilled, I do have at least a few more skillz than before.