Cake #16: Fondant and Gumpaste Finale

Tonight was my final Wilton cake class. Although I'm somewhat glad to be finished (not having the pressure of having to bake a cake each Monday and not lugging all my boxes of cake decorating supplies to Michaels), I'm going to be at a loss without my weekly cake instruction. I guess I'll just have to set up a cake schedule for myself...I definitely have a lot of ideas I'd like to try! Thank God for Cake Central!

For my finale cake, I decided to make several new gumpaste flowers from the Wilton gumpaste kit I recently purchased. I made a handful of pink orchids, which were extremely time consuming; unfortunately, they are also extremely fragile, so most of my orchids broke before I could even attach them to my cake. I also made numerous blue sweet peas, which proved to be much easier than the orchids! I had hoped to make many, many more flowers than actually ended up on the cakes, but with the extra difficulty of the gumpaste flowers that just didn't materialize. I'm sure the people at work won't mind!

Cake #14: More Fun with Fondant...and Gumpaste!

Tonight, in my latest Wilton Course (Fondant and Gumpaste), we learned several new techniques, which we could add to our cakes tonight. Among the techniques were: the draped cloth, handkerchiefs, the zig-zag swags and borders.

I chose not to add all these new elements to my cake, instead going for a more elegant look of the draped cloth and roses. I am extremely pleased with how well this cake turned out; after my last disaster with my co-worker's birthday cake, I was beginning to doubt my abilities. Fortunately, all the gumpaste and fondant things were extremely easy and provided a real boost to my esteem!