Master Decorator - I Am Not

I signed up for this cake decorating class at Michael's. There is this lady I work with that makes these amazing cakes. When she told me that she was taking classes I thought she meant at a culinary school, but when she told me they were offered through Michael's I was so excited! I have always loved to bake and thought it would be so much fun to decorate too!

My first class was Monday. Let me begin by stating that typically this course is a four week course - one class per week. Well, I guess the lady is going on vacation the last part of August so our course is crammed into just two weeks - two classes per week. So Monday - our first class - we basically just sat and watched her ice a cake. Now, nothing against the teacher because she's a sweet lady, but she demonstrated out to ice her cake with this fancy tip and bag ... now I'm guessing that most people in the room ... like myself ... don't have much more than a spatula at home to ice with. So I wished she would have showed us what we would've looked like at home spreading our icing with a tiny spatula.

I digress ...

So Monday was our first class ... Wednesday was our second class. For our Wednesday class we needed to come to class with an iced cake. So ... that meant on Tuesday night I needed to bake and ice my cake for my Wednesday class. You can do the math ... I barely get home before 5:30 ... I need to bake a cake ... let it cool enough so I can ice it ... make my icing (did I fail to mention that part?) ... and smooth out the icing all before going to bed. Ummm .... yeah ...

So let me tell you a little bit about my Tuesday night ...

I got home and immediately started to work on my cake. I had gone to the store on my lunch hour to get all the ingredients I was going to need to make my cake and icing. So I got the batter together for the cake (yes it was boxed) and popped it in the oven. Next it was on to the icing. Now in class our teacher told us that the icing would be very stiff ... and when she made it in class to show us ... she used a stand mixer. So I mixed my ingredients together and started blending them with my little hand held mixer ... yeah ... I had chunks flying all over the counter ... in my hair ... all the while my little mixer was on the highest speed, but barely moving.

My icing was totally lumpy and crumbly. It was horrible. By then I realized I needed to check on my cake. I clicked on the oven light ... "hmmm ... that cake doesn't look like it's rising at all." Nope ... it was about as flat as a hockey puck and as if that wasn't bad enough ... it was crooked. WHAT???? I has successfully failed at baking a boxed cake. Let's just say what little confidence I had about this class was completely gone. How can I decorate a freaking cake when I can't even bake one?!?

At first I thought I could still use it ... so it was a little flat and lop-sided, but maybe it was salvageable. UNTIL ... I tried to get it out of the pan and it broke in half. Splendid ...

Now I was mixing cake mix #2 ... and praying I'd have enough energy left to still ice the thing when it came out of the oven.

To make an incredibly long story short ... the second cake turned out fine and even made it out of the pan in one piece. My gracious father-in-law allowed me to borrow his stand mixer (it's totally awesome BTW!!) so I was able to successfully make non-crumbly icing and it only took me until 9:45 to finish icing my first cake. Can you say t i r e d ??

Apparently I should've stopped at the icing part and skipped the decorating because on our second class we decorated our iced cakes. Yeah ... mine turned out like this ...



I really think it looks like a small child did it. If Bella weren't only three I'd tell people she made it. I'm beginning to think that cake decorating is not for me.

At least it tasted good!