ICING A CAKE SMOOTH

I mentioned in my previous post that I was to decorate my final cake for Wilton Cake Decorating Course 2 yesterday.  Unfortunately, that did not happen.  I got busy at work, so I wasn't able to finish my cake on time for my 6:30 p.m. class.  When Vince got home to pick me up, I was having tantrum fits.  My class was about to start shortly, and there I was, still in my home clothes with an offset spatula on hand, messy kitchen and all that, not to mention that my cake was not even halfway done.  Another thing that bogged me down is the fact that my work was not yet done, and that I would have to log in back to work afterwards should I attend my cake decorating class which finishes usually around 8:30 p.m.  Sigh.  Ultimately, I decided to skip class, so that means I need to arrange for a make-up class with the instructor.

Well, despite that, I'm quite happy because, I finally was able to ice a cake presentably smooth.  If you would remember, I had been complaining about my struggles on icing my two previous cakes for course 1.  In my desperation, I resolved to buy cake icer tips (which confusion had me buying two of the same kind *toinks*).  You bet I tried the cake icer tip, but since I was on crunch time and I didn't want the fuss of putting icing in a piping bag, I eventually ditched that and went back to the lovely offset spatula.

Markings slightly visible on top icing were from paper towel. 

I realized that time is a factor for a successfully iced caked - at least for a slow poke like me. I crumb coated the cake, gave it generous amount of time to dry, then iced it, and again gave it ample time to dry. When the icing was dry enough (it didn't stick to fingers when lightly touched), I pat it smooth with a paper towel instead of wax paper.  It's cool how the paper towel markings got transferred onto the cake icing.  I learned that trick from a video I saw online (sorry, I can't remember now which site).

So, I'm saving this cake for now in case I can arrange for a  make-up class this week.  Next Monday is the start of course 3 (fondant decorating).  I am so excited to sign up for that, but I wanted to check with the instructor first if I can do that even if I haven't made up for my course 2 final class yet.  Bummer!  Oh well, even if I don't hear back from my instructor, I'll still go ahead and sign up for the third course anyway ☻

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To see my progress in cake decorating, visit this link:

KARENINA'S KEYK/KUPKEYK DECORATING ADVENTURE

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FORGET-ME-NOTS CUPCAKES

I was out the whole day yesterday (and pretty much the whole Saturday too), so I apologize for not being able to get back right away to all of you who visited my blog, and left comments, as well as my meme hopping buddies.  Thank you!  Right now, as I write this post, from 46 comments or so, I'm down to just 22 more to approve and get back to at least on this blog (I have about 18 more on my other blog plus the Happiness Is participants that I need to visit too), so I still have a lot of catching up to do.  Hehe!

As I've said, it was a busy weekend for me.  Vince and I drove down to New Jersey yesterday.  We were invited to a lunch celebration for my goddaughter, Samantha, who I haven't seen for seven years.  She was just a baby when I last saw her in the Philippines.  Her mom (Momsie) and dad (Kuya) were both very close friends of mine way back from college.  I was one of their bridesmaids when they got married, and when the firstborn (Samantha) was christened, I was given the privilege to be one of her godmothers☻ I last saw Momsie in 2005 before I left Philippines, whereas I last saw Kuya in 2009 in New Jersey.  The story of our friendship deserves a separate post, plus I want to share some pics of us too, so I'll reserve those for a future post.

Anyway, before I end this post, let me share these cupcakes I made for my friend, Momsie.

These are chocolate cupcakes baked from scratch.  For the decoration, I used thinned royal icing and gum paste and fondant.  I was supposed to make buttercream icing, but I found that I still have a lot of royal icing in stock, so I decided to just thin the royal icing out and use that instead.  The forget-me-nots flowers were made out of gum paste and fondant mix, and the rest of the decor were thinned royal icing.

I need to practice more to improve in decorating cakes/cupcakes, especially work on my piping techniques.  I'm almost done with my second Wilton course, and later today, I will do my final cake in class for course 2.  Oh, wish me luck!

Do you know that you can store uniced cupcakes in the fridge for a week,
and in the freezer for three months? ☻

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GASTRONOMY MONDAY

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MY WILTON COURSE 1 FINAL CAKE

Last Monday was my "graduation day" for the Wilton Basic Cake Decorating Course I had been attending for the past four Mondays, and here is my final cake for the course:

Honestly, I was kinda disappointed at myself for not being able to achieve the look I wanted for my cake.

First, I yet again had another tough time icing my cake.  Although I've noticed that my icing technique had relatively improved as compared to when I iced my first cake, I really wish I could have done it much better.  There were a lot of rough and unevenly iced parts on the side of the cake.  The icing was supposed to be white and smooth, but because it was a red velvet cake underneath, the icing turned pinkish and those red speckles all over were cake crumbs that my spatula kept on catching as I was icing it  :(  Boo!  I really need to practice more and work on my icing technique, but I'm going to try my luck next time with a cake icer tip, and hopefully, that will save me time and effort, resolve my icing technique issues, and make it much easier for me.

My first cake

Secondly, the flowers on my final cake were "soggy."  When I baked and decorated cupcakes with swirls and flowers last week, I was really pleased with my finished product.  For my final cake though, I had to transport the made-ahead flowers in a plastic container, and by the time I got to my class, the flowers already softened up and some had been crushed during the travel.  However, I'm pretty comfortable with piping basic borders and flower designs, so I'm positive that had I decorated my cake at home, I would've made a better job in that regard.

I dressed up my cupcakes for a spring party!

Anyway, this is a brand new experience for me.  I've never iced or decorated a cake prior to attending the Wilton Basic Cake Decorating Course, so overall, I'm quite happy with my newly acquired skills.  I definitely need to practice more if I want to improve and make better cakes in the future, so that's why I signed up for the second course, which is Wilton Flowers and Cake Decorating Course.  Now, I'm excited much! ☻

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GASTRONOMY MONDAY

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CUPCAKES, ANYONE?

Last Monday, I learned from Wilton Basic Cake Decorating Course how to pipe shaggy mums, pompom flowers, drop flowers, rosettes, leaves as well as how to put filling into cupcakes and decorate them. For that lesson, I baked Black Bottom Cupcakes to practice decorating with while in class. Since I needed plain uniced cupcakes at the time, I didn't add the usual cream cheese filling that goes into Black Bottom Cupcakes. Honestly, I was successful in baking those cupcakes and I really liked it, but I'll hold off on sharing the recipe and pictures here in my blog until the next time I make them with both components present - cake and cream cheese filling.

Anyway, I was invited for a dinner tonight at one of Vince's co-residents' house, and I took that chance to hone my baking and decorating skills (or the lack of it!) by obviously showcasing my latest hobby.  Since I wanted to step up my game and go beyond the common chocolate or vanilla cupcakes, I spent several nights reading up on various recipes.  I didn't want to be too ambitious because I don't have much baking experience myself, plus some ingredients for elaborate and level-up recipes are not easily available at the grocery store, so I went for something that I'm familiar with - COCONUT AND BANANAS!

All dressed up and ready for a spring party!

I got this idea from a Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest Publication - Cupcakes magazine.  The Island Bananas Foster recipe listed in the magazine is a bit complicated for me (I think).  It's a "spiked" cupcake in that rum is one of the ingredients for the batter, and for the frosting, you have to ignite the rum and set your pan on flame - you know, just how you see chefs do it on TV - that stuff, and I'm definitely not on that level yet, so with fingers crossed, I decided to modify the recipe - batter and frosting.  I was wary not to screw up because I was doing modifications to a "live" cupcake.  Should they turn out inedibly bad, I cannot just toss them to the garbage or else I will have nothing to bring for dinner, so this recipe that I had concocted in my mind has got to be right.

Fortunately, the cupcakes turned out alright.  I may have to do some minor tweaking with the batter next time but the current recipe is overall good already.  For the frosting, if I had followed the recipe, I would have added 7 cups of confectioners sugar.  Can you believe that?  Seven fatally sweet cups of fine powdered sugar.  Dang!  I was afraid that if I do that, my cupcakes would put a diabetic into coma, so I knew that there's just no way I'm going to add seven cups of sugar into the frosting.  I stopped at 3 cups, although I think I should have stopped at 2 cups.  The reason behind the confectioners sugar is that you add as much until you reach piping consistency.  At 2 cups of sugar, my frosting was way thin and rather runny, so I added another cup, but when I tasted it, oh boy, I couldn't bring myself to add another dash more.   I have to do something though to make the frosting thick enough for piping, so I thought I'd try adding shortening and see if that would do the trick, and voila, happy me, it did!  ☻

So, for posterity's sake and for those who would be interested in trying Kokonut Banana Kupkeyks a la Karenina, here goes the recipe:

MY FIRST WILTON CAKE

One of my "extracurricular activities" that has taken up some of my blogging time recently is Wilton Basic Cake Decorating Class.  I signed up for this eight-hour course at Michaels Arts and Crafts Store, and I have attended two of the four lessons so far.  It has been keeping my weeknights busy because I'm not a crafty person and so I have to devote some time after work to practice piping, read the book, research for recipes, etc.

Anyway, during the first lesson, we were taught the basics of baking a cake, how to prepare icing with different consistencies, how to level, torte and ice a cake, and how to make a design pattern and transfer it onto a cake.  At the end of the two-hour class, we were given time to practice piping stars onto flat round cookies using Wilton star tip and ready-to-use decorator icing.  We were also given a homework to bake a cake and prepare medium and thin consistency icing, which we then brought to class on the second lesson for application of what we had learned the previous week.

So how did I do?  Hmmmm...

1.  Bake a cake at home. Check!

Want some chocolate fudge cake?

2.  Prepare thin and medium consistency buttercream icing at home. Check???!

Conquering Wilton's almond buttercream icing recipe.

3. Leveling, torting and icing the cake. Uh-oh! Mayday, mayday!  This part was done inside the classroom, so unfortunately (or fortunately I should say), nobody took pictures to document my disaster while I was icing the cake.  It seemed that the icing I prepared  at home was not the perfect consistency and so I had to redilute it with water to make it thinner.  I spent a lot of time tediously icing my cake and trying to smoothen it as much as I could, which in turned caused me to run out of time to finish decorating it on class.  My teacher wanted to see my decoration, so I told her that I'd continue at home and will show her next week a picture of my finished product.

Seriously icing!
My T-shirt says: "I'm a pretty awesome Pinay"

4.  Dimensional decorating.  This also involved coloring the icing as desired, and transferring the design pattern onto my cake.  I toiled on the icing redo job and I was too tired and hungry already by the time I finished icing my cake that I decided to skip the design transfer portion and just piped and decorated directly onto my cake.  

My anything goes dimensional decorating.
I swear a gradeschooler can do better than me on this!

5. Tadaaaaa! Oh well, this may be the ugliest cake in town, but hey, it's my first time and I did put my best effort on this, so I'm happy and proud of it.  Yay!

I still have two more lessons to attend for the basic decorating course, and after that, I'm planning to sign up for the next three courses, so stay tuned to find out my progress in this craft.  Until then, wish me luck! ☻

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GASTRONOMY MONDAY

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