A Lesson Learned

1-The disaster cakes are the bright pink, white, and brown
2-The disaster cakes from another angle
3-The finished product, whew, glad thats over!

Poured fondant is one of those recipes with minimal ingrediants and fairly easy to do. Mastering the technique of making sure you have the right consistency is a whole other issue. Today I make what I like to call "over-sized" petit-fours in my Wilton 12-cavity bar pan. The cakes came out ok and it didn't take much to make them level. Coloring the poured fondant was easy but again consistency and temperature will ruin you every time. It only took a few tries to get it almost right. It would be nice if the YouTube video tutorials were a little more detailed. Watching and doing are clearly two different things!

Trial and Error

This yellow cake covered w/chocolate icing topped with a Steelers logo came to me as a special request for a groomsman cake in April. The groom didn't get a slice so I offered to make him another one at some point and time. Well the time has come, its his birthday so I made another attempt at the FBCT Steelers logo. For the non-bakers thats a frozen butter cream transfer where you print the logo in mirror image, trace it with icing, freeze for an hour and adhere it to the cake. Moving right along, while the process seems a bit easy mastering this little technique takes a little skill.

The first time I didn't pipe my icing close enough so you could see gaps. This time around I piped too hard and my red bled, ah ha that rhymed. Anyway, its also the second time I didn't check the consistency of my icing which is why my rope is not PERFECT as usual. It would happen in front of the cake too if you notice.

I guess the good thing is I got the practice I needed on the FBCT and I made a friend happy by making him another cake. Practice makes perfect through trial and error.

Practice Makes Perfect

Today I made a little assortment of decorated sugar cookies for my neice. She graduated from Kindergarten this week and she's having a birthday next week. To kill two birds with one stone, I used the same colors on all the cookies and mailed them to her in a complimentary cookie tin.

Since I had extra cookie dough and I had already made a batch of royal icing, I decided to make a few shapes and practice on my cookie decorating skills. The icing consistency was great for outlining but I struggled a little with the thinning at times. My other challenge was making sure I was using the right tips.

Long story short, I was able to practice without wasting. My niece got two presents in one, the baby shower themed cookies are for a friend, the spring cookies were taken by a neighbor, and the others will be displayed in a cookie boquet after frosting.