31 Jul
Cake Decorating? Not For Me.
In the LDS Church we have something called Enrichment. It’s a day during the month where the women of the congregation get together to develop specific skills and habits and learn from each other. Next month we’re doing a night on Disaster Preparedness (I’m helping give one of the presentations), and during July the theme was Cake Decorating. One of the women in our ward has her own cake decorating business and generously offered to spend an hour explaining the basics to a group of women, some who hadn’t done much more than make a box mix cake and frost from a can before this.
I attempted to make a cake and some frosting from scratch, but it was an enormous failure. Emphasis on the enormous. At least I didn’t have to worry about ruining my cake with what I knew would be a poor set of decorating skills.
She showed us how to torte and layer. Just cut each layer in half horizontally, frost and stack and you have a cake with 4 layers of cake and three layers of filling.
Frosting under pressure. She made it look easy.
She showed us how to use piping gel (is that the right term?) to trace and frost designs on our cakes. I think I can handle that for That Baby’s first birthday!
After a very short demonstration it was time for us to break out the provided supplies and give some piping a try.
Necessary supplies include a pastry bag, coupler, and tip of choice.
I somehow managed to put all of those three things together and look like I knew what I was doing.
Then I stuffed my bag with frosting. And my face. But most of the frosting went to the bag. I think.
Look how pretty! It’s all an optical illusion created by my depth of field though, as you’ll see farther down the post when you see what I did to my cake.
Think you just need a bag of frosting, a coupler, and a tip if you want to decorate cakes? Nope, like any hobby it is usually more expensive than you expect it will be when you begin. I’m sticking with photography and staying away from cakes. TH will be happy to read that.
We briefly learned how to make roses, which requires a special tip and and a little disk to spin around while piping. It was pretty fascinating to watch.
We practiced our piping on paper plates before we tried on the cakes we brought (for those who brought cakes, some didn’t bring them and just used paper plates the whole time). You pipe, scrape off your plate, refill your bag and start the process over again.
Someone brought a pretty pink cake to practice on.
I decided it was time for me to start practicing on the disaster of a cake I brought. I couldn’t make it look much worse no matter how bad my skills were, right?
Big thanks to my friend Jill for these pictures of me. I admit I like having my picture taken, but I’m always behind the camera so there usually aren’t very many. 
Want to see my finished prduct?
HAHAHAH
Now you can’t deny that is the worst piping you have ever seen. I didn’t even try the basket weave.
I wish I could claim this lovely little work of art, but it was the demonstration rose that I snagged for the top of my cake.
The 2nd demonstration rose? It went on my cake as well. And some of the mini pink flowers she made before the class began to show us what can be done. She offered to let me have them, and I figured my cake could use all the help I could round up.
I think after this post you can understand why I won’t be making wedding cakes anytime soon. Just taking pictures of them.
P.S.-I used the Cooking Light Basic Cake recipe in an attempt to make a “light” cake. It was awful. Maybe I did something wrong but it was the worst cake I’ve ever had. Anyone found success with this recipe?
I'm a farm-raised almost-crunchy stroller-pushing picture-taking lifestyle-blog-writing gastronomy-obsessed divine-seeking thrift-store-combing cheese-inhaling pavement-pounding laughter-sprinkling lover of individuality and taking chances.
Oh Jenna! I don’t think it’s that huge of a disaster!! It looks adorable. That Husband and Baby will appreciate your efforts for sure
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1I agree, it looks adorable! After watching all of the cake shows on the Food Network I’ve been very tempted to take a cake decorating class, but have yet to sign up. We don’t usually bake around the house, my husband follows a low carb diet, but this weekend we will be making some low carb cheesecake and he’s a great cook so I’m excited to see how it turns out.
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2Growing up with a mom who was the local “wedding cake” lady you would think I would have picked up some of her skills….I would practice with all the leftover icing, etc. after she finished a cake. Sadly my piping still looks like it did when I was 10
Now if you want molded white chocolate mints I’m your girl…although I think the demand for those went with the big hair of the 80′s didn’t it?
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3Don’t be discouraged! My first cake came out very crappy. It took me hours of practicing on a board until I could get a nearly mediocre skill going.
The basket weave is my nemesis…that’s the one thing you have to dedicate yourself to REALLY focusing on and my attention span just isn’t all there for that design. I like fondant…you should consider giving it a try…it’s JUST like play-doh!
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4Oh and I forgot to mention, for a good diet cake, you should try a box of cake mix + 10 oz. of diet soda (any kind of either) and that’s it…no oil, eggs, water. It ends up being about 2 WW pts/slice. I like chocolate mix + diet coke and spice cake + root beer.
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5I think that for a first attempt, you did a marvelous job! What a neat tradition to have. I can only imagine what skills I could learn if I went monthly.
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6It’s no where near the banana cake with random splots of yellow I made for my husband. I think that may go down as the ugliest cake in history, especially after I added some sprinkles because sprinkles make everything better.
But, eh who cares what it looks like as long as it’s tasty.
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7Hmmm… practice makes perfect?!?
I caught TLC’s Cake Boss one night and could not pull myself away from the TV. It’s amazing what some people can do with cake while making it all look so effortless!
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8I LOVE LOVE watching cake decorating shows. I would love to own a bakery and make cakes all day long if I had some skill in that area. I know some basics (like making a crumb layer before you frost, getting the layers even) but nothing fancy. That would serioulsy be my dream job, and if I could not eat the cakes and not become horribly obese, all the better.
I’m a good cake maker, but frosting - - that is where it goes all down hill for me. Bring on the store bought, canned frosting!
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9it looks like you actually got an icing recipe and not a frosting recipe - icing is thin and translucent and think sugar cookies. frosting is thick, think wedding cake.
frosting is so easy - it’s almost impossible to mess up. 2 sticks of room temperature butter, mix them until they’re smooth, slowly add 3 cups (or a lil less) of powdered sugar, maybe a tablespoon of milk if it’s too thick, and some vanilla extract - boom.
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violarulz Reply:
July 31st, 2009 at 11:02 pm
wow, that’s sounds like a lot of frosting! I use 1/3 cup butter (or 5 Tbl. whichever is easier for you to measure) and then beat the snot out of it in an electric stand mixer. slowly add in powdered sugar until it’s a big angry sounding blob in the mixing bowl and then thin out appropriately with flavor extract and milk. Yum.
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Haven’t tried the CL cake, but I’ve heard great things about what Amy mentions above. As far as I’m concerned though, if I’m going to eat cake, might as well eat a good one and make it a small piece. =)
I love this modified Cooks Illustrated white cake recipe from The Way the Cookie Crumbles (the last one in the post): http://www.crumblycookie.net/2009/07/01/white-cake-comparison-2/
At any rate, I have terrible piping skills. There’s a reason why I stick with cupcakes!
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11I started laughing. I am SO NOT a cake decorator. I think you did a good job though - especially for your first time!
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12This is awesome! That’s really neat that you all get together and learn things from one another.
I really love your facial expressions. Especially the first one. I’ve experienced it many, many times. It’s the look of “Is it going to work? Please work. I don’t think it’s working *concentrate*”
It is piping gel that you can use to transfer images, etc.
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13Hmm…not the worst, but….lol Cake decorating is hard! Have you ever seen the cake wreck blog - now those are some poorly decorated cakes!
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14I love to bake, but I’m a boxed mix girl. I’ve already got bread, whole wheat, AP and whole wheat pastry flour, there’s just no room for cake flour in the pantry too!
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15I don’t think it went that badly at all - give you a few more classes and you’ll be doing fine!
As for the cake - if you are not a baker than I’d just go a Betty Crocker mix or something. The results aren’t much different and you won’t give yourself a headache!
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16I made a “healthy” cake with icing for Ted’s birthday & it was a visual disaster. It tasted okay, but was seriously the most unattractive cake ever. “Healthy” & “Cake” just don’t belong in the same sentence!!
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