Lessons Learned in Cake Class

I like trying new things, but I always struggle when I don’t pick something up right away. It’s not that I expect to be great at everything, but I feel that if you follow the rules you should get a positive result every time. That hasn’t been the case in my cake class so far…

I had no idea this class was going to be so intense. There are a lot of things you have to do at home to prep before each lesson. This past week we were supposed to come to class with an 8” cake baked, filled, frosted and ready for design. It doesn’t sound that hard, but I had several issues – or “learning opportunities” as my instructor would say. Here are a few:

1. Confectioner’s sugar = powdered sugar (Don’t mix this up with regular sugar or you will have to throw away the double batch of frosting you just spent the better part of an hour beating to get it to be less grainy.) Luckily I had a sister-in-law that answered her phone at 10 p.m. to give me this little tip.

2. When turning down the oven temp. 50 degrees to prevent a dome on your cake, you must also adjust the cooking time. Otherwise you will end up with a liquid mess that, in my case, was all over my oven thanks to me overfilling the pan. Fun times!

This was not a problem that could be fixed 45 minutes into my lunch break.

3. The Walmart bakery will sell you an unfrosted cake with only a few hours notice, but it will cost you. There’s no discount for buying it minus the decoration.

4. Marshmallow cream might look fluffy in the jar, but trying to spread it is an entirely different story!

So not pretty!

5. Piping gel will dry if it sits too long on your wax paper. Transferring a pattern to your frosted cake after that is bad news.

This was after try number 2.

6. No matter how bad you think you have it, you’re not alone. I thought going through 2 cakes before class was horrible, but one of my classmates was on her 4th!

Despite all of this, I think my cake turned out pretty good. What do you think?



Here are Kim and Krissi's cakes:

Kim's filling looked MUCH better than mine.

Kim's flip-flop cake!

Krissi's lady bug cake!

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