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The Wilton cake decorating Course I class is fantastic! After just four
lessons of 2 hours each, we can make roses!
Our Course I, lesson 4 projects: February 10, 2001 |
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| The Wilton class frosting, although called "buttercream," is made with shortening, powder sugar, meringue powder, clear vanilla and touch of milk. While it is extremely
easy to work with, |
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An experiment with Angel food - while the decorating was
fun, the center did tend to sink into that hole.
Diana made the roses for this cake with a frosting stripe at the thin end of the rose tip (104). Notice - it's just one day after the last class of Course I. February 11, 2001 |
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| Diana made this cake for the
three-year-old daughter of a co-worker using the Wilton classic
buttercream frosting recipe.
March 3, 2001
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The first time I used cream
cheese frosting was for Francie's carrot cake. The frosting
was a bit soft for figure piping (Course I, lesson 3), but oh, does it
taste so good!
March 6, 2001 |
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| This cream cheese
frosting was flavored with spearmint on Esther's double-chocolate cake. Yum. Yum. March 26, 2001 |
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Another excellent cream cheese frosting/cake combination was Laura's lemon cake and lemon-cream cheese frosting. However, the frosting was a bit shiny and soft for figure piping. April 2, 2001 |
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| Wilton's Course II
emphasizes royal icing
and color flow. The class buttercream icing was used for the
leaves, basket weave, and rope edging. Our Course II, lesson 4 projects March 28, 2001 |
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Royal icing was used for the daisies, pansies, and
violets. These flowers may be made days or weeks in
advance.
Color flow is a much softer frosting for flat shapes that fills in an outline. Those shapes should be made at least 2 days in advance. As a side point, the glass cake plate underneath this cake was a wedding present for my parents - who were married in 1957. |
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| This orange-flavored, cream
cheese frosting was perfect for the basket weaving on Pamela's Williamsburg
Orange Cake.
I used half the amount of butter and doubled the amount of powdered sugar, which gave more smoothness to the frosting. March 30, 2001 |
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A new cake pan, the upright teddy bear - Diana decorated
this cake for her best friend's baby shower.
She used buttercream icing with lots of brown coloring. Notice the two blue, plastic diaper pins - we found them at the craft store in the Wilton cake decorating section. May 6, 2001 |
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| Diana made a second lemon cake for the baby shower with cream cheese frosting. She used several of the royal icing pansies I had made a week before. May 6, 2001 |
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I made more modifications to the cream cheese recipe in
Debbi's farewell cake. This time I used one - 2 lb bag of powdered
sugar, one 8-oz package of cream cheese, one stick (1/4 lb) of butter,
and one-two teaspoons of water.
This reduced the amount of shine and gave the cream cheese a bit more texture. Notice that the round tip #5 was used for the purple vertical piping in the basket-weave design. May 10, 2001 |
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| Another new pan, the
10" heart is perfect for one cake mix. In this cake for Debbi
J's birthday, I also used spearmint flavoring on a devil's food cake.
The texture of the revised cream cheese frosting recipe seems to be more malleable. Again, I see the advantage in creating the royal icing flowers ahead of time. I only used three colors (white, green, teal) when making the cake and I was able to add much more color using those royal icing flowers. June 3, 2001 |
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I used chocolate for the first time in Barbara's birthday
cake.
First, I reserved about a cup and a half of the vanilla for the sides and lettering. Then I mixed in 2 ounces of bittersweet which gave the lighter brown color, approximately another cup and a half for the top and sides (after separating it, I thinned it down). I put two more ounces in the remaining frosting, but it wasn't dark enough, so I added two more ounces of unsweetened chocolate. This made the frosting too stiff, but that problem was easily solved with a few drops of water. June 10, 2001 |