Cake Decorating - the final class

This is the finished product of my 5 weeks of Cake Decorating classes. And it's not too bad, even if I do say so myself.


The board was decorated a week ago, and once the icing was quite dry I sketched the Rose and finished it use the Brush Flood Work technique I learnt in Class 3.


The roses were hand made by me using fondant icing and this YouTube tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uzp3XfhUpQ4

Then last night we covered our cakes. I actually had to make two cakes! The first one was too short, so I made another one using double the mixture and it still isn't as high as I wanted. But apparently to get it really high you have to stack your cake (in layers).


It was a lot easier to put the icing on the cake than it was to ice the board, but that may have been because we were using a different brand of fondant icing.


I really enjoyed this class however I don't think I'll do another one. This one cost me over $300 and considering I learnt to do the roses using a free YouTube video, I probably should be able to learn to do other things by watching videos or other tutorials online.


People at work ate my cake today and they said it was nice...and no one has since been sick, so I didn't poison anyone!! That's a definite plus!

Fashions on the Field - the finale

The finished product:

Me and Joel in the Mark Waugh Marquee

So after all of my effort, and admittedly a lot of money, this was the finished product - matching handbag, head piece, dress, and there is also a brown and white spotted umbrella there! And guess what....I didn't win!

I didn't even make it into the finals! I was kind of upset about it, but then I realised if I had have won I would have been hanging around the stage for over three hours missing out on actually enjoying the day.

As it was I was corralled like cattle behind the stage for over an hour! I missed the beginning of lunch and I had to have the scraps the no one else wanted, I missed out on an hour of drinking, and I missed betting on at least 1 race!

On the plus side, I backed the winner of the Black Opal Stakes and the Canberra Cup...although I didn't actually realise it until a couple of days later because I was so drunk! My fiancé had collected my winnings for me, so I had the money, but I didn't realise how good my picks had been!

Fashions on the Field - part 2

I didn't post anything once I started sewing the actual dress, but thankfully I am done! I thought I was going to be done pretty quickly, and I got very excited, but then I put the dress on and it was all wrong!

The pattern was too big for me, and even though I put the dress together in calico first, it just didn't work straight away. I had to adjust the bodice so that the sash on the waist was a bit higher. And then I had another moment of thinking I was almost done....until the zip I had pain-stakingly inserted broke!!

So I has to un-pick the zip and then buy a new one and then insert it again! Ugh!! But finally it worked. It didn't fit perfectly though, and so I had to use a few darts and my fiance helped with pointing out where they were needed at the back.

Finally the dress was completed, I did a quick machine 'blind stitch' hem, and then added some tulle to a slip, and phew! Done! Complete! Finished! THANK GOD!!

I have my head piece (by Viktoria Novak) and my hand bag (by Madame Clochette), a brown and white spotted umbrella, brown gloves, Wittner shoes, stockings and the outfit is complete.

Now wish me luck that this hasn't all been in vain!

Cake Decorating Class 3 - brush flood work

This week we learnt to do 'brush flood work'. What is brush flood work I hear you ask. Well....it's actually really hard to explain. Basically you pipe a line of icing, then get a wet paint brush and brush over the icing, pulling it downwards. It creates a really nice effect, which you can't really see very well in the photos of my work, but trust me that it can look lovely.
The trick is, however, that you don't have to do this free hand! You can draw on, or stamp on, the design (into your plaque of fondant icing) and then just pipe over the top! So it looks like you're really talented, but actually you're just tracing!!

The world of cake decorating

I have had my second Cake Decorating class and I have to say that the world of cake decorating is definitely an interesting one. We are learning about stencils, piping, embossing and 'flood brush work', and that is just the tip of the cake decorating ice berg!
There are moulds you can use, texture sheets, glitter & pearls, and all different types of icing and colourings! I have ordered some gel colours from Baking Pleasures, because they give a stronger colour, along with a damask stencil that I can have a play around with. I am really going to have to control my spending and my curious nature, because it is so tempting to buy some of these things before I learn how to actually use them!

In Class 2 we learnt how to do stencilling, both with just painting in the stencil (using powdered colours) and with royal icing (which is m preferred method). Ignore the colours and the stencils used, this was just to learn the technique:

I also iced the back of the letters I had made in Class 1. This makes them almost 3D and then you can sit them upright on a cake. I'm definitely looking foward to having a play around with my new stencil and colours, this would be the technique I'd use on icing my wedding cake (if I decide to do my own).