What I'm Making/Made this Week - June 25 through July 1, 2012

I have been cooking.  It's just that I'm doing it a little at a time.  One thing for sure is that our mourning process for one of our pug clean-up crew requires a lot of comfort food and sweets.

Here's what I've made so far:

Monday is Vegan Day and I found another recipe out of Vegan Diner by Julie Hasson that I wanted to make.  Then I added it to one of my favorites from the book that I already made.  I present to you Home-Style Loaf with Garlic Mashers...

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Home-Style Loaf with Garlic Mashers

Advanced Gum Paste Flowers – Class #1

This week I started the final Wilton course in cake decorating – Advanced Gum Paste Flowers.  I am excited and a little bit sad.  I couldn’t wait to get started, but I’ve really enjoyed these classes and am sad that soon I’m going to be done with them.

Gum Paste and Fondant – Class #4: The Final Class

Tonight was our last class and you know what that means: FINAL PROJECTS!  We still had a couple of things to cover, but the majority of the class was doing our final design.

But first… here is what we covered this night from the class lesson plan for this course:

• Gum Paste and Fondant 101
• Bow Loops
• Mum Base, Rose Base
• Carnation Base
• Assembling a Bow
• Tinting Gum Paste and Fondant
• Basic Principles of Floral Cake Design
• Calla Lily
• Rosebud and Rose
• Carnation
• Calyxes and Leaves
• Assembling the Calla Lily
• Daisy
• Mum
• Covering a Cake Board with Fondant
• Elements of Fondant Cake Design
• Creating Geometric Designs Using Cut-Outs, Overlays, and Inlays
• Eyelet, Ruffle, and Ball Borders

We had to cover our cakes with fondant and Maria taught us a couple of techniques on how to do it.  I managed to get my cake covered with only a couple of dimples… not bad for my first try.  I did have some boo-boos at the bottom, but that’s the beauty of using a border.  Hides all boo-boos quite well, thank you very much.

I practiced the different borders and decided my ruffle border looked the best.  It didn’t take me too long to get my border completed and placed on the cake, so I moved on to the design.

After a long decision making process – which included me whining a lot – I decided on a version of Wilton’s Creative Calla Lilies Cake and their Small Cake, Big Ideas Cake.  I wanted the small cluster so I could write a “Happy Birthday” message on it.  However, the small cluster on “Small Cake, Big Ideas” was too small, so I wanted to pile them the Creative Calla Lilies cake.

I also had not practiced applying small decorations to the side or cutting out and assembling letters.  I worked slow and steady and this was my end result…

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Gum Paste and Fondant – Class #3

I can’t believe there is only one class left after this!  I’m having so much fun with this class that time is just flying by.  I signed up for the final course in the series too, Advanced Gum Paste Flowers with Maria.  Of course, now I’m getting ahead of myself… let’s get back to Gum Paste and Fondant and what I learned this week.

Here is what we covered this night from the class lesson plan for this course:

• Gum Paste and Fondant 101
• Bow Loops
• Mum Base, Rose Base
• Carnation Base
• Assembling a Bow
• Tinting Gum Paste and Fondant
• Basic Principles of Floral Cake Design
• Calla Lily
• Rosebud and Rose
• Carnation
• Calyxes and Leaves
• Assembling the Calla Lily
• Daisy
• Mum
• Covering a Cake Board with Fondant
• Elements of Fondant Cake Design
• Creating Geometric Designs Using Cut-Outs, Overlays, and Inlays
• Eyelet, Ruffle, and Ball Borders

These flowers are the most difficult I’ve made to date.  It took several tries for me to get some pretty enough to photograph.  Then there’s the mum, but here I am getting ahead of myself again.

We started with Daisies.  Using the daisy cut-outs takes a lot of time to perfect.  Even with the most precise cutting, you’re going to end up with rough edges that you’ll have to clean up.  Considering you are working with gum paste, it is going to have to be done quickly.

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Gum Paste and Fondant
Daisy