Royal Icing Flowers

At the beginning of July a co-worker asked me to make a cake for both her mother's birthday and her mother-in-law's birthday. The two parties were two days apart. We decided to go with a flower theme for both of the cakes. An easy decision to make since we both work at a garden center.
The first cake I made was based on the final cake of the Wilton course two, Flowers and Borders. I made about 20-25 pansies with Royal Icing and I painted them to add in some details. The cake was two small oval cakes stacked and iced with a basket weave. Then flowers were added. I was told that mom absolutely loved the cake.


For her Mother-in-law I went with purple and yellow royal icing daisies. I wanted it to be different than the first so I decided on a square cake, and no basket weave. I was going for a simple yet pretty look. I was worried though about the petals of the flowers. It's always best to make more than you need in case there is some breakage. I think that I broke petals on about 3 or 4 of the flowers, so I was glad to have planned ahead.

My 1st Class Graduates

So the Fondant and Gum Paste course girls had their final class last night.
I was excited to see their final cakes. If I get permission from them, I may have to post the pictures to show everyone how well they did. I was definitely impressed. One of my students mastered the Fantasy flower, which is a hard one to do. It's not a real flower that exists in nature but it is a very pretty gum paste flower when done right. I do have to admit that I personally have not had much luck with this flower either. I guess I should practice so that I am able to show my next class a finished one done right.
The next class I am teaching is the 1st Wilton course - Discover Cake Decorating. It starts Tuesday Aug 4th, which happens to be my little brother's birthday. In the class I demo icing a cake. I'll have to make that one in honor of him, but I can't give it to him. I think shipping it to Vancouver would damage it.
In case I don't write an entry that day, Happy Birthday Lyle!!

Giant Cupcake

Giant Cupcake
Originally uploaded by sarahenrycakes

Who wants icing? This cake has it.
There is a shaped pan that you can buy to create this giant cupcake, but I decided to do it the hard way and save some money.
I used 2 eight inch pans and one 6 inch pan for the cakes and stacked them up to be carved to the right shape. Unfortunately there were some places where it needed filling in rather than carving, so I added carved off pieces of cake back on. But really in the end you cant see all that. The pink icing does a great job of hiding my construction.
The cake was for a good friend of mine who's daughter was turning two. Originally she had planned to make regular sized cupcakes herself for all the guests, but time and circumstances prevented that so she asked me to step in. Of course I was glad to do it.

Stanley Cup

Stanley Cup
Originally uploaded by sarahenrycakes

Catching up.....finally.
It has been a while since I made this cake. And really I should have posted it in time for the Playoffs in May. I do apologise for the quality of the picture. I was in such a rush the Friday that it was picked up. There was another cake being picked up the same evening, and I needed a box to fit this cake. I barely made it home from the store getting a box when the lady arrived to get it. After she got it from me, she was actually in the car almost pulling away when I ran out to stop her because I needed a picture. To top it off, the rain had just started! It was rather embarrassing.
Anyhow, the cake was an interesting one. I carved the cake to the shape and iced, then covered it in grey tinted fondant. In order to get more of a silver look, I used silver luster dust mixed with lemon juice and painted it on. The instructions for luster dust give options of clear vanilla, vodka, or lemon juice, and the juice was the only one I had in stock. Maybe I should have prepared myself more for the Friday rush and had the vodka ready, if not for the cake, then for me to wind down afterwards.

Class # 1

I had my first class last night. I had seven lovely ladies to teach. They were all very nice to me. Everyone knew that it was my first time so they went easy on me. The other class instructor thankfully came along to help point me in the right direction giving me pointers and helping to answer some of the class questions.
There are so many things that come with experience that I do not know yet. I guess that I am just going to have to work that much harder on selling more cakes just to get that experience. It would be a wonderful thing to be able to stay home and decorate cake full time instead of being an accountant by day and cake decorator by night.
I want to thank my friends for their support and well wishes on my first day. I needed the confidence boost. I'm not sure that I did as well as everyone said I would, but you have to start somewhere, and it can only get better. So I am keeping my fingers crossed that next Tuesday I don't feel like someone turned up the heat to 30 degrees while I teach.