Pages

Words of Wisdom

In life, we have to choose between the jeans and the cookie jar. Liz Hurley chose the jeans and I chose the cookie jar

~ Nigella Lawson....(on women's body image and her own voluptuous body)

Monday, February 16, 2009

Butter, cream, roses and me........

Went to my first Buttercream Cake deco class on Sunday.

I've said before how my hands are better off holding a paintbrush than a piping bag. My words really rang true yesterday. My cake was like a normal Buttercream Cake after a 30-min car journey on a rocky road.

The chef was a Chinese guy with a 20-year experience in a family business. He said he'd been decorating cakes since he was a little kid still in school helping his parents in the family-owned bakery.

What the Teacher made :

My teacher's Birthday Roses Buttercream Cake
Teacher's demo cake No.1

My teacher's Buttercream Cake No.2
Teacher's demo cake No.2

My teacher's Buttercream Cake No.3
Teacher's demo cake No.3

I'm hopeless at smoothing my cream frosting. Trying to smooth things over and the frosting would thin out and my cake would show. Very unpleasant.

The Chef? He smoothed his cake using a piece of cut plastic and his cake looked like a steam-buttercream cake. Glossy and smooth.

What I made :

My Buttercream cake before spray 1

Look! A blob of buttercream just fell from the sky!

My Buttercream cake before spray 3 - ugly piping
Just look at that super ugly swirl!
Worst thing is I don't know how to correct it.

My Buttercream cake before spray 4 - piping getting better
The better side of the cake.....phew!

My Buttercream cake before spray 2
Rose leaves that ended up looking like ferns

My buttercream rose and leaf before spray
The only area which I can be a bit proud of. The leaf is just right.

After awhile, I gave up smoothing the cake and proceeded to little decorations. The Chef taught us to make swirls using the 'star' nozzle. Then he taught us how to pipe out our roses. He said I rotated my flower holder wrong. Where his roses look smooth and fresh, mine looked wrinkled and incredibly 'blossomed out'. In a way, that's a good thing as the ladies next to me had hard times trying to make their roses 'blossom out'.

My Buttercream cake after spray Phase 1 - my leaves were blue

Then, on to the airbrushing. In my eagerness, I took the blue colouring to spray my 'leaves'. They look 'dead'.

My buttercream cake after spray Phase 2 - rainbow

Then, I sprayed around the edges where I had piped with my star nozzle. As I spun the cake, the colour change to another and another. What the heck was that?

The Chef said I didn't clean the airbrush properly. Thus, I ended up with myriads of colours sprayed onto my cake.

My Buttercream cake after spray Phase 2 - Greener leaves

OK. Then, the wordings. Where everybody else wrote 'Happy Anniversary' or 'Happy Birthday', I narcissistically wrote 'Shelly'. Ha...ha...!

Since this cake is forever going to be called my first Buttercream Cake, then I'd better 'stamp' my name on it.

Back home? It's chow time.

Best thing is........my nephews demolished the cake once I brought it home.

I had a great time.

4 comments:

  1. I started reading your blog when I woke up this morning, it's around 830am..and the first thing I did after seeing these photos was nothing but drooling. The cake seems to be too inviting for someone who loooooooooooooves cakes..especially creamy cakes with rich decors. I wish..one day my dream will come true. To savaur a cake on my own that is.. :P

    ReplyDelete
  2. hahaha.. sori aku gelak kan cake kau ni... anyway.. atleast u try.. congrats!!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey that's not too bad for your first cake. I took a class 2 years ago and still improving but I'm by far not an expert and it's not my career. Here is a link to my cakes. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=691811639&aid=136431 Don't feel so bad I'm finding even 2 years later it takes lots of practice.

    ReplyDelete
  4. That's a fab attempt for your first cake. Mine was such a disaster, I couldn't even photograph it!!

    ReplyDelete