Wilton Course 1 - Class 3

Tonight at class we learned some more basic techniques including the shell border, star flowers, swirl flowers, character figures, and the second part of the wilton rose. I thought I was more prepared for class this time since I made up my bags with the couplers ahead of time, but that was not the case. I always seem to be about 5 minutes behind the rest of the class. This time it was because I was trying to make black icing. Here's a tip - don't try to make black buttercream from white buttercream. I used so much color to try and make it dark enough and still wasn't happy with the result. I'll use chocolate next time.

I didn't want to put clowns on my cake, but I did practice them on my board ahead of time. See?

I should have taken a picture of my rose, but I didn't. I did much better this week because the consistency of my buttercream wasn't as thick and I could squeeze out the base easily with one hand. Next week I want to add a little piping gel so the edges of my icing don't look so jagged and cracked. That was a little trick our instructor told us to get smoother roses.

I wanted to do a turquoise and orange cake this time, and got a little crazy adding the color. So, it turned out really bright/dark! I added a shell border along the bottom, swirl flowers around the top. I need a lot more practice on the swirl flowers, but I really like them.

Ok, by this time, class was over - everyone was packing up and heading home. I didn't want to bring home 1/2 bags of icing, so I made some rosettes on the top with the leftover icing, and some stars on the side. Now, I'm not sure we were supposed to learn the rosettes this week (I was too into mixing my colors to listen to everything), but it was on my practice sheet next to the shells and I just did it anyway. I did try to pipe a black panda bear face on top, but between the grayish color and my lack of skills, it looked more like a deformed blob. So I scraped it off and covered it with a bigger rosette.

Finished cake looked like this! This cake was the Cookies & Cream box mix recipe.