Royal Icing Flowers

Class this week was centered around different royal icing flowers and leaves.

The first flower we worked on was a violet. 2 small petals on the bottom, 3 on the top with two little dots in the middle to finish it off. Very cute!

Then I put them in the flower formers to help them get a more natural look.

The next flower we made were pansies, Purple and yellow this time, though they can come in a variety of colors.
You make them by making 2 (yellow) petals on the bottom, followed by another two smaller petals on top of those two. And adding 3 petals to the top, however with these petals I did not make them individually, I just continued piping until all three petals were made.

I placed them in flower formers to dry, and added a tiny little yellow circle to the middle of each flower. This connects the two colors a little better and makes it look a little more life-like.

Another way to make them a little more realistic is using a very tiny paint brush or toothpick and painting little 'faces' on them with violet color gel. It really helps make them look better.

The next flower we worked on was ridiculously simple! A very tiny Forget-Me-Not. Beautiful and simple. I LOVED them!!! Using a tip#101s I made a simple 5-petal flower, which came out extra tiny but adorable.

Next we learned how to make a few flowers in a lily nail. We covered the nails in foil covered with a TINY bit of shortening, to make it easier to remove the flowers later.

The fist flower was a purple petunia.

For the stamens I used some lily stamens first.

And then fancy pearl stamens, giving each of them a slightly different look.

Switching to white royal icing and a leaf tip (354 I think...) to make the Easter Lilies.
I loved them! I made all the petals and then went back and place the lily stamens in the middle, adding extra royal icing so they didn't fall down.

I was lazy when making the next flower and I didn't color the frosting. So I ended up with white poinsettias but still beautiful. Honestly one of my favorite flowers I have made so far. It would be fun to cover them in red and gold luster/disco dust! :)

And after making all those flowers, some greenery is needed! :) so of course we worked on some simple leaves with the #102 tip. They are nice and will work with many different types of flowers.

And some beautiful holy leaves for Christmas time :)

And an adorable Christmas tree, or bush, or whatever else I would like to make this into. It's pretty easy. Using a leaf tip (like I did), or a star tip, I worked from the bottom to make the tree. As you can see I need to work on the top of it, but you get the idea. Haha :)

Pink Lemonade Petit Fours

I was so excited for class this week!!! I have been waiting for this class since day one. I LOVE petit fours! They are some of my favorite desserts because they are easy, simple, elegant, and can come in so many varieties/styles/designs. I could not wait to learn how to make them properly :)

I started with a 9x13 Pink Lemonade cake, cut into 2x2in squares. I chose not to fill them this time because I did not have enough time this week (2 kids home sick from school all week did not give me a lot of spare time).

I also crumbed coated the 2x2in squares with pink buttercream and colored the poured fondant pink as well, to cover the Pink Lemonade cakes color.

I used a (clean!) hair pick to hold the cakes while I poured some fondant over the top, making sure to cover all corners properly and not to have it too thick on the top/sides.

After I made sure the excess was off, I placed it on a cake cooling rack (over a piece of wax paper, to catch the drips) and let them set up just a little bit.

Before they set up completely I placed the decorations on top. I had some leftover glittery blossom flowers, so I put them on top of a few petit fours.

Putting them in cute little petit four wrappers, available at your local bakery or craft store, really helped jazz them up and make them look much more professional and complete looking.

I put them all together in a 1/4 sheet box. There were quite a few with flowers on them.

But I also did a few with scroll like decorations, as well as some ruffles and flower/scroll/dot buttercream decorations. Just trying out a few different things to see how they worked out.

Then ended up looking wonderful though! I really loved them. cant wait to make another batch!

They were a big hit with everyone I shared them with! :)

Saturday Practice

I was bored this Saturday so I whipped up a batch of buttercream and practiced a few techniques.
I decided to make my frosting orange today because it seemed fun. And is not a color I use very often so this seemed like a good chance.
I started by working on my basket weave technique. This is hard to master. Plotting out the proper spacing is the most important part to help ensure that you have a nice tight basket weave. I used a small round tip (tip #4 I think) for the white and a small star tip (#16) for the orange to achieve this look. No basket weave tip for me. Lol! I like the hard way. It looks amazing in my opinion and tends to take more time and effort but it really does look great.
I also used the star tip to create the rope border around my basket weave design.


The next technique I was wanting to learn was how to pipe a buttercream bow. I use tip #104 and a rose nail to make these. I didn't get a lot of pics because these were hard! And didn't always turn out very well. I made the two loops of the bow by placing the wide side of the tip on the nail and moving it around until one side is made, turning it and making the other side. Then making the ruffled ends coming down from the center of the bow. I love these bows! I just need to master them and they will be able to be used in so many ways!

After I was done with that, I decided to whip out a few 5-petal flowers. I used tip #104 for the flower petals and tip #16 for the center. I really like these actually...they remind me of creamsicles or something. I think they're cute. Just need to find a use for them.

Not a bad way to spend a Saturday...😊

Lattice and Lace

This week was our biggest, hardest cake to date but the time and effort payed off because it is also my favorite cake I have ever made!

I started out making two boxed cake mixes (yea, cheating. But since my class is more about decorating I let myself cut this little corner) and that produced 2-9in cakes and a dozen mini-cupcakes. I didn't need the cupcakes, so I frosted them with a light green buttercream and topped them off with a few extra flowers I had made (

I filled my cakes with my favorite ganache (2:1, choc:cream) and stacked them.

Using some thinned down buttercream frosting I created a crumb coat and allowed it to dry.

After it had set up (just at room temperature) I put on my frosting and smoothed it out with my large offset spatula.
 

Thanks to a handy little garland marking tool, I was able to seperate my cake into 8 even areas. I applied a lattice pattern on the sides of the cake, using the marks from the garland tool as a guide for starting and stopping my lines.

I applied the Corneille Lace pattern to the scallops on the top of the cake. (I had never used this technique before but after working on it for a while, it's one of my favorite patterns for a cake. Simple but elegant, and can be made in an size to give it a very different feel)

To help give the illusions of scallops, I made a very small star border around my lattice work (cleaning up all those messy edges I didn't bother cleaning up).

Wanting the top to look a little more elegant, I used a simple, small pearl border around the Corneille Lace.

Final touches to my cake included a larger, yellow shell border around the bottom of the cake (helping to cover up my very messy frosting job) and a few simple (pre-made) wild roses and drop flowers. I chose to make them in purple, because it really popped with the yellow and white frosting.

This is by far my favorite cake I've made. It's simple, elegant, and fun. It would work wonderfully as inspiration for a larger wedding cake, or even a nice birthday party, or a summer picnic.