Figure Piping

This week in class we learned a wide variety of figure piping skills. A very wide variety :)

The first few that we learned were birds - ducks, swans, and a stork. I love these animals! They are adorable and can be used in so many ways on so many different themed cakes. I can't wait to try them on a real cake.

The next is a very adorable creature. It is supposed to be a dinosaur. I think he makes an awfully cute dragon. But in all honestly...he looks like an alligator. Haha! :) Whatever he is he is cute! It'll be interesting to find out how to use him on cakes. Maybe at the bottom of a volcano or in a little nest. I'll have to experiment with him.

The next thing I learned to pipe were grapes (like I said, a wide variety of things this week). I had the wrong tip this week, one size larger, so my grapes are more like table grapes and less like wine grapes but they work.

And the last thing that we worked on were clowns. Belch! I am not a fan. Will probably never make these again but it was an important lesson on spacing and placing things on the cake.

Baby Buggy Cake

My first real cake project for my class was a baby shower cake shaped like a baby buggy. My daughter helped me color my frosting, so it's a baby girl's cake.

I started with a regular 9x13 white cake, a ganache filling and 3 batches of a stiff buttercream frosting.

After bringing my cake to class we split and filled out cakes to prep them for cutting and frosting.

I cut the top of the buggy out, turned that portion into the wheels, and rounded off the rest of the corners.
After cutting the cake, I thinned out some frosting and covered all my cut edges in frosting as a crumb coat. (I wish I had pictures of this part but my hands were covered in ganache and buttercream)

I learned how to make a basket weave, star, and zig zag this week. I obviously need to practice on making things a little tighter, but not bad for my first cake.