Can't get enough out of Piping.

Plain looking cake, don't ya think? (kidding). Yeah... I went a bit nuts on the decor on this one, BUT the only suggestion my instructor had was to keep the color combination the same throughout the cake. (aka. lose the read stars!). I LOVED striping the icing to make the "pansy" effect on the violet flowers. Makes for real looking flowers, doesn't it?
The hardest part of this entire cake was the Icing of the cake. No one told me it was going to be difficult to ice the cake in order to have a perfect smooth surface. Tip? Use a large Icing tip. It helps apply the icing to the cake without causing the "crumb" effect when you smooth the icing out. Tip #2? After you spread the Icing, run the Spatula under hot water and immediately iron out any "kinks" on the cake. The hot water softens the icing, allowing you to perfect a smooth looking cake.

Even though I was told to keep the colours mutual, I really liked how the Orange stars stood out on the cake. Meh! I don't think anyone noticed. The cake disappeard within the hour :).

No Monkeying around!

My very first cake for class 2 of Wilton course 1 (4 months ago).  It's chocolate cake with chocolate chip chunks. Needless to say, I learned two things. First, making a character cake requires simple recipes. I decided to go one step further and bake the cake with chocolate chips. Yeah.... what I didn't expect was for the top half foot of the monkey to be stuck to the pan since the chocolate sunk to the bottom of the pan, creating more weight and upon flipping the pan over, monkey was footless. (Panic #1). Second, I learned that mistakes, CAN be fixed with a piping bag, tip and buttercream icing. Voila! Monkey's foot has been repaired :) It was my first time, piping icing onto a character cake. I started out squeezing stars the size of Maple leafs (Panic#2) and eventually learned that piping stars is all about pressure and control of lifting the bag. By the time I finished piping the monkey, I wished I had more cake to pipe! Since I don't have children (yet), I decided to bring my cake to work and share with my colleagues. The admiration for the cake lasted 2 seconds and was consumed within the hour!