Bake Me A Cake...Course 3

Wilton's Course 3 - Fondant and Tiered Cakes was the next class I took.

It gave me basic skills in working with fondant that seems to be all the rage on the cake shows currently on TV. I discovered that I do not care for the taste of fondant, at least the Wilton brand (sorry Wilton). But it is fun to work with.

Course 3 started off with some new tricks with buttercream icing...Cornelli Lace, Sotas, a bead border and a ruffled border with garland. We also did some brush embroidery work where you pipe out an outline and then using a small paint brush, pull some of the icing in towards the center of the flower outline. I think in the right applications, this would be very pretty on a cake.

We also learned how to do drop strings on a cake using buttercream. One important thing was if you were transporting a cake and it called for drop strings, do it once the cake arrived where it needed to be. The drop strings are very fragile and would likely break during transport.

Then we moved on to fondant. This class required a cake that had a crumb (very thin) coat of icing. We covered our cakes with fondant and added cutout decorations and a large bow that we made.

My First Fondant Cake

That cake was just okay. Nothing spectacular. But for my first fondant cake, I did alright.

We also learned some additional flowers in this course made out of Royal icing using a lily nail former. Oh, this was FUN! We made Easter lilies, poinsettias, petunias and morning glories. It is amazing what you can do with icing.

Royal Icing Flowers
(from top center - yellow petunia, blue morning glory, pink poinsettia, white Easter lily)

Our final cake for this course would be a stacked or tiered cake. Stacked cakes are where the layers sit right on top of each other. Tiered cakes have separators or pillars in between each layer.

We learned the proper construction techniques for each method. For stacked cakes, wooden dowel rods the same height as the bottom layer are placed inside the cake to support the top layer. A cake board circle the same size as the top layer is under this layer and helps to stabilize the cake construction.

I chose to do a stacked cake for my final class. The design was to be of our choosing so I decided to go with buttercream icing and fondant decorations.

Course 3 Final - Stacked Cake

Again, my co-workers enjoyed eating this cake the next day. They are getting VERY spoiled. :-)

While I was taking this course, the opportunity came up to do a cake outside of what was required for class. This cake was enjoyed by my Relay for Life team. We were going to auction it off, but the team chipped in and bought the cake before it even reached the auction table. We ate the cake during the Relay for Life event. A little extra sugar was good for energy while walking lots of laps. Actually, I think we had a bunch of cake fiends on the team.

This cake was a combination of buttercream icing and fondant decorations.

Relay for Life Cake

Next up, Wilton introduces a new set of courses and I've signed up for Flowers and Cake Design.