Buttercream......my eye!!

As I mentioned in my first post, I took a Cake Decorating Class at the local craft store. Mostly because it was winter and I live in the country with only one neighbour across the road from us. And I live in Canada, so winter can be very cold, very long and in my casea very lonely experience. Did I mention I have two small children also, 5 and 3. Back then they were only 3 and one. I really needed something else to do and think about until spring came and we could go outside again.

Okay, so onto my Cake Decorating Course.

The first class consisted of how to properly bake a cake, grease the pan, and level the cake. Levelling a cake is essentially cutting the top off of the cake to make it perfectly flat. Not difficult if you have a good eye, but I wear bifocals!! The task of levelling a cake for me falls right into that section of my glasses where I am looking up and looking down to try to find the perfect angle of my lenses to look through.

 It never worked out. My cakes were crooked every time. I have since fixed the problem. Now I fill the cake pan a little too full. The cake always bakes higher than the edge of the pan. Then I take my favourite serated knife and lay it on the lip of the cake pan. The knife is long enough that it spans to the other side. I carefully drag the knife along the edge and voila, I have a very level cake. I then tip the cake out of the pan and there you have it...perfection! Unless of course, I haven't greased and floured the pan properly and then I have a very level jigsaw puzzle. That has happened on more occasions than I am presently willing to admit.

The second class was a demonstration on how to properly put filling in a double layer cake and how to crumb coat or dirty ice a cake. Pretty simple.

The third class showed us how to fill a piping bag, hold the bag, change the tips and practice making different little patterns and borders with the piping bag.

The final class we would bring all of our newly developed skills together. As homework we would make a cake, level it, fill it and crumb coat it. We brought that to our final class along with all of the supplies we would need to ice it with decorative icing.
Our teacher gave us the Buttercream Icing recipe to make the icing ourselves and she gave us additional instructions how to get the icing to the right consistancy so that it would pipe easily. I started to worry, there was not any butter, in this "buttercream" recipe. Oh well, I pressed on. We could colour the icing any colour we wanted or make multiple colours if we would like and bring all of our little containers of icing to class.

Before I show you my final project I should explain. I can never just do anything the way I am told to do it.

My daughter really wanted a fairy cake. Well, I didn't learn that in class. How would I incorporate what I had learned into a fairy cake?  Here's what happened. I made a round cake, I levelled it (almost) this cake was crooked!! But I used the angle to my advantage. I filled it and then crumb coated it. Just like I was supposed to. Then I took the picture of the fairy that my daughter liked and I traced it with a stylus into the crumb coat of icing. When I got to class I piped along all of the impression lines that I had made at home. Finally I started to fill all of the sections with icing stars in the colour I had predetermined at home. One more thing before you see the project. Have you ever done something, really up close and think everything is looking good and then you step back and it looks completely different or maybe out of proportion?

Well, when I got home I put the cake on the table. I was very proud of my newly aquired skill. For the first time I stepped back a looked at the finished product. Uh oh!  She wasn't quite right.  My confidence wained a little as I showed it to my husband. This was his reaction:

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WOW, it's a little trampy!! Why would you choose to do that?

He completely missed her wings or that she was one of the fairies in Emma's favourite book and favourite puzzle and favourite movie. But it gets worse, I showed Emma. She hated it. That fairy should have a red dress and orangy wings and the flowers should be roses because of her name and on and on and on. Well to save myself from any more criticism I decided that we would just quit looking at it and eat it instead. I took one bite and to my horror, I had made the very icing that I had detested all my life. My first creation was a disaster and it was all I could do to repress the gagging sensation from that terrible icing I remebered from my childhood. My family was in complete agreement and the cake found a new home in the compost pile.

Here is the best part. Our only neighbor I told you about earlier has two dogs, they found the cake in the compost pile, ate it, and had the runs for two days.

So this is my point, no one should eat that awful shortening based icing. It is nasty!!

 I also believe that if a recipe has the word Butter in the name of it then the recipe should have some Butter in it!!