buttercream and cake 101

Oh my.. did I have fun last night.

But, I froze my butt off and forgot a pen.

Next time I am bringing my pen and parka.

….and I learned a lot.

I have to admit… I was surprised at all the things I didn’t know.

For instance….

there are 3 “types” of butter-cream- one for flowers, one for borders and one for frosting the cake.

Ya know what? All this time… I thought butter-cream was butter-cream.

Also, did you know you don’t have to grease and flour pans? Just grease. How about that?!

Keep a pastry brush in a ziploc in the fridge just for prepping pans. One less dish to wash.

To flavor plain cakes, add a packet of unsweetened drink mix. I hear raspberry added to chocolate cake is divine…

If you need black frosting, start with a chocolate frosting base…and add vanilla to eliminate that nasty color taste.

Oooo- you make a dam of frosting to hold your filling in.  I liked that tip. My filling always runeth over.

There were tons of little tips and tricks… I forgot my pen and only brought a pencil. note: pencils and glossy paper do not play well together.

I will be sharing with y’all the stuff I didn’t know before my favorite tips.

Let’s start with powdered sugar:

You know those balls left over after you shift it? Throw them out. The’re evil and will mess up your texture.

For that pure white butter-cream, use clear vanilla. I know, it’s not real vanilla. But, sometimes you need white. Who wants a dirty looking snowman cake? Ewww.

The instructor cake ninja who by the way owns her own bakery, has been married to her high school sweetheart forever and who knows more than Betty Crocker about cakes passed around cups of butter-cream so we could see and feel the different textures.  It smelled just like a bakery. Next time she should pass spoons around, too. Just a suggestion. There was a lot of self control demonstrated as those cups went around.  Seriously.

Do you get that dome-head on your cakes, too?

Look at that leveling job. I was trying to see what kind of knife she used, I know it was a bread knife… but that baby cut through that cake like buttah.

She did a neat flip maneuver with the cake racks, too. Makes me want to go buy another.

This is her dam demonstration. No, not damn. Dam, to hold the filling in, silly.

…gotta watch those crumbs. They multiply, you know. Little gremlins.

I looked down for  6 seconds and all of the sudden it was this. Now, that’s a cake ninja.

So… we all got to practice with the star tip. I was the nerd who bought the ultimate kit with 177 pieces… so I was also  the last one to find my piping bag, coupler, tip and practice board. Despite all the glorious compartments I had, 177 pieces of decorating stuff is a lot to dig through.

Along with my pen, and parka next week… I am going to bring cups and water. My consistency was a bit thick, so I had pointy stars. Heck, I was chilly…at least my stars matched…ahem…me. I know ya catch my drift. Brrr.

I meant to take a pic of my red stained thumb. I will try and get that over the next few days… it will be red for a while. My daughter keeps wanting to give me a band-aid, because my thumb is “leaking”.

At the end I had these:

Just goofing around…

My neighbor had these:

I soooo copied her initial idea. (shhhh….)

Down the table I spied some nice blue…

That’s just purdeee!

There is a ton more I learned, when I do my cake …I will share more. Mmmm, we are doing a cake next week. Oh yeah… my booty is going to show it’s appreciation for this course.

It’s just way more fun than an exercise course…don’t ya think?

Oh, by the way…next week I will put up a link where my course is. There is a web cam. You can stalk watch me take my course. LOL…won’t that be fun?!

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