Little Leaf Cake

Well, I am finally done with my Wilton classes. For this last set of classes, we didn't have to make a cake until the final class. AND we could design it however we wanted! Hooray! I was racking my brain trying to figure out what I should do when it occurred to me: an Orla Kiely cake! 

Orla Kiely, for those of you who don't know, is an Irish designer with a clothing line as well as purses, travel, homeware, and stationery. You may have seen some of her stuff in Target a year or so ago. Many of her patterns are floral or leaf motifs so of course I love her stuff. I couldn't find a leaf fondant cutter in the shape I wanted so I googled "making cookie cutters." I used this wikiHow article to make my own cutter. I printed out a bit of this Orla Kiely leaf pattern (my inspiration :) and cut out a leaf as a template. Then, I cut some floral foam in the shape of the leaf to use for molding the aluminum in the shape I wanted. I removed the foam, added a couple of staples to secure, and voila! My very own fondant cutter. It cost me about $5, and now I have a giant lasagna pan with a hole in the bottom (very useful, I know) and some leftover floral foam for future projects. Score!


Enough of the babbling, here is the cake! (with my Orla bag):

I couldn't get the fondant as smooth as I would have liked, but that's because it chose to stick to my mat despite my greasing it. Oh well. It's still pretty cute.

Leaf out.

Party in the SWVA

The Gnome and I were invited to two cookouts this past weekend: one to celebrate a friend's 30th birthday and the other to celebrate a couple's 1st anniversary. I made the same dessert to take to both parties: a fruit pizza. I got the recipe from allrecipes.com: Fruit Pizza II. I used reduced fat cream cheese and lite Cool Whip for the pizza "sauce." I went fruit shopping on Friday to get the supplies and got raspberries, blueberries, kiwis, and pineapple. Of course, we already had a surplus of strawberries from our strawberry picking extravaganza. Here is fruit pizza #1 (pic from camera phone):

Do you see the hidden message? Well, do ya? It took people at the party a while to notice. I think it's probably easier to see in the picture.


And fruit pizza #2:

It has an orange juice/lemon juice/sugar sauce drizzled on top. Someone brought oatmeal raisin cookies to party #1. One party-goer had the crazy idea to dip the cookies in the extree sauce I brought. This led to much cookie dipping that would likely rival oreos and milk. Try it sometime...you might love it :)


Also, I forgot to share my most recent cake decorating feat. I made a fudge marble/chocolate buttercream cake for some friends that are departing for CA next month. We will be sad to see them go, but hopefully this will motivate us to go on a trip to CA. Their names are Holly and Zach, and since they are moving back to CA near LA, I thought it would be fitting to decorate the cake to look like the Hollywood sign using their names. 

I got the Gnome to make me a template and print the text out flipped backwards. I traced it onto wax paper with clear piping gel and transferred it onto the cake. Then I just traced away with my icing. After piping a billion stars to fill in the "mountain," I finished the bottom of the cake with a rope border. My mom saw the picture of the cake and asked, "what is the significance of the brown top and green bottom?" So I guess it wasn't completely obvious what I was trying to depict. Oh well. Maybe it's because there was no sky...

Basketcase...I mean, cake

Last night was the final night of Wilton Cake Decorating Course II. Unlike the first course, we only made one cake for this class. We spent three weeks fashioning flowers out of royal icing and butta-cream. We always have to take lots of supplies to class, and I pretty much have always forgotten something for each class. Last night, as I was driving in rush hour traffic (well, as much rush hour traffic as Roanoke, VA has), I realized that I'd forgotten my flowers. All of my hard work from the past three weeks was sitting on top of the dryer in the laundry room. Doh! Oh well. It didn't matter because it took me the entire class to put the dang basketweave pattern and woven rope border on the cake. Here is a before flower picture:

And to the right of the cake, you can see my arsenal of flowers. This morning, my mission was to put every single last one of these flowers on the cake in some cascading manner. I didn't use the 2D birds we made 'cause I didn't like the 2D-ness. And I did go a little crazy with leaves, but that is to be expected from me :) 

I present to you, my basket cake. Ta daaaaa!

Ready, Set, DECORATE! - Wilton Course 1

Many times in the past, I have looked at Wilton course listings at Michael's and ACMoore trying to figure out if I should take them. Well, the local ACMoore was offering 50% the course fee (which is normally $45!) so I gave in to the urge and signed up. Four classes and 3 cakes later, I'm an expert cake decorator. Um, no. But I am getting better at getting a super-smooth, iced cake. I am no expert at making the Wilton Rose, but with some practice, I think I'll be able to produce some pretty decent roses. (Just between us: I think roses are just okay. Both on cakes and as real flowers. I'm more interested in making other flowers. Shhhh...don't tell anyone.) I have enjoyed the classes and found them to be helpful for learning the techniques, but the supplies are expensive! I was told by the instructor before the classes started that if I bought the 101-piece Wilton kit (available at Michael's and ACMoore, $145 without a coupon), that I would only have to buy a cake pan to get me through to course 4. Well, during the fourth class of the first course, she fessed up and said that we would still have to buy the kits (about $30 each without a coupon) for each of the following three courses. But, but, but...And you have to buy the ingredients for both the icing and cakes and make them in your spare time before class. So there's quite a bit of homework. For three of the classes out of the four, we had to make a cake and two batches of icing. We had to ice the cake prior to class and thin the remaining icing down to have different consistencies. If you decide to take these courses, make sure you are aware of both the time and monetary investment involved.


I will share my cake pictures with you. The first two are from my cell phone so the quality is low.


Cake 1 - Rainbow cake (we had to freehand the rainbow because the instructor forgot the template)

Cake 2 - Clown cake

Finale Cake - complete with Wilton Roses