I nailed it!!

 Their faces say it all!  My nephews were completely thrilled with their How to Train Your Dragon cakes.  No amount of failure in the kitchen seems to diminish the joy a cake creation can bring, but I was unable to fully relax and enjoy the completion of these cakes until a couple of days had gone by with no emergency room visits.  What, a story?  You knew there would be!  It all began with an innocent google search.
  

I think Robin will agree with me that we wouldn't be able to do what we do without alot of help from the internet.  From the thousands of Google image searches to the wonderful advice from professionals at Cake Central and other hobby blogs, there seems to be unlimited resources for anyone with cake ambitions.  I tend to be pretty trusting so it didn't occur to me that anything could go wrong with a little tip I discovered late one night.  Someone suggested to stand a nail up in the center of the cake and it would magically keep the cake flat with no dome to slice off.  For good measure, I put in five nails... 

The trick worked like a charm, but I forgot about the nails which, by the time I remembered them, had sunk and been baked into the bottom of the cake.  I could only find three, though I did manage to locate five empty indentations where the nails had been.  The cakes were served to the children and guests with warnings as I was hopeful, but not entirely convinced the cakes were safe.  So far, no reports of perforated bowels, so ummm...all's well that ends well, right?  Hey, don't look at me like that...I learned my lesson!  Go ahead and look at those happy faces again!

Jacobi 

No class?! No problem!

Do you want the good news first or the bad news?  Good news is....we have an extra week to perfect our skills!  Our cake decorating master teacher had a family emergency and cancelled the class, but we didn't get the message until we showed up with our frosting tools and cupcake dreams.  I convinced the manager at Michael's that it would be in the best interest of their company to open up the classroom for us anyway so I could spend extra time studying their cake manual and practicing my technique.  The bad news is....I am not entirely convinced it made any difference.

Jacobi's Funny Farm

I was pretty sure my flowers were not going to look like the pictures in our handy dandy manual, even though I tried to follow exact instructions.  So I rebelled a little, or went a bit crazy. exploiting the freedom of having the room to ourselves without the pressure of our sweet instructor looking worriedly over our shoulders.  You can't see them well in the picture, but the white rosettes on my sad silly sheep were actually, 'woolly' pretty, even though she doesn't seem to think so.  The cow was quite as angry as she looks since I mutilated the top of the cupcake with my too stiff frosting.  Hey, my squashed chicken kinda reminds me of my husband Doug after his angioplasty!  I finally had to stop after the poor piggy pleaded for help.



Robin's Pretty Garden

I have since been diligently trying to follow Robin's obedient example and will make sure to follow the rules next time so she won't be embarrassed my me.  We should be having a make up class with the same assignment next week so I have a chance to redeem myself.  However, after making more than 50 drop flowers on my practice board this morning, only one would have looked at home on one of Robin's beautifully executed cupcakes.

Jacobi

Despicable Me? No, the Cake!

Week two of our Wilton Cake Decorating class is over and I'm ready to move on! I mean, don't get me wrong I loved that we actually got to decorate cakes instead of cookies. The only problem was the assignment. Dimensional Decorating. There is only so much you can do with a big #12 tip and have it look cool. Jacobi pulled her cake off and managed to produce something cute and fun. She's a cake master. Look at that concentration and attention to detail.

You go girl! My cake on the other hand seriously looked like it belonged as a feature on Cake Wrecks. I'll show you the picture...just don't laugh...okay go ahead and laugh, I did. I felt a little frustrated with our instructor who assured me my icing was the right consistency only to tell me after I had tried to spread it on the cake that it was too stiff. UGH!!! After I struggled to get the cake frosted, without a crumb coat, I began practicing my design. Which the instructor assured me was a good one, only to tell me halfway into my disastrous creation that, "Perhaps something not as ambitious for your first cake might have been nice." UGH!!!

As I finished my lovely two hearts tied together with a bow (in case you couldn't tell what it was) I let out a sigh. Which caught the instructor's attention. "It's......(LONG PAUSE)....nice....maybe next time you could practice the bow before you put it on the cake." UGH!!! I had been practicing for 15 minutes and actually felt fairly confident in my bow skills, not that you can tell. With a deep breath I decided to focus my attention on my shell border and dots and try to ignore the hideous blob of frosting sitting on top of my cake. The only thing that kept me going despite my despicable cake decorating was knowing my kids would happily eat it no matter what it looked like.

Robin

No kids and no cake.

We just went to our very first Wilton cake decorating class.  As much as I love my kids' noses in my cake business and tripping over my feet in the kitchen, it was quite pleasant to get away.  I can't speak for Robin, but I for one am glad it was just cookies today because I don't feel obligated to post pictures!  The highlight for me was when our teacher came over and showed my cookie to the class as she very sweetly said,

 "There is no such thing as an ugly cake or just one way to decorate.  I am here to teach you a technique so I need to show you how to do it a certain way...but I am not saying it's the right way nor that you have an ugly cookie {cue the sidelong glance and longish pause} and I really encourage creativity; the important thing here is to be consistent with {cue the ~possibly imagined?~ briefly raised eyebrows} whatever it is you are doing."

Well, anyhoo, I was kind of happy with my neon green baby slug border. 

Jacobi