Spring Buttercream and Royal Icing Flowers

In March 2010, my friend convinced me to take a cake decorating course at our local craft store. She had just finished the first class in the series and had really enjoyed it. I was eager to learn how to make a more polished looking cake and the fancy flowers, so I signed up with her. Only problem was that this was course two in a series of three. I had missed the first course! I figured that I was way past basic decorating anyways, and jumped into the second course. That was a mistake. I struggled the first few classes with my icing consistency because I did not know the definitions of thin, medium, and stiff consistency icing. My flowers melted because my icing was wrong! After some extra coaching by the instructor and my friend, I did catch up eventually. What a shock to me--I had mostly straight A's through college and graduate school, only to be failing an non-credit cake decorating class!

In the class, we learned so many great techniques. Like the half rose-bud that I practiced making on crackers until I got tired of eating crackers with frosting!

And the chrysanthemum flower, which is made on a flower nail, dried, then peeled off the wax paper backing, and placed upon a cake or cupcakes like the ones I made for my co-workers.

One of my favorite techniques is the rosette. It can be used as a flower, a border, or to cover the top of cupcakes and cake! I've filled the spaces between the rosettes with a star tip on the cupcake below.

Then we learned how to make royal icing. This was very difficult for me--my royal icing just would not turn out right. First it was too thick, then it was flat and watery. So, I had to borrow icing from my friend and the instructor...oops! (It wasn't until the after the next course that I figured out how to make royal icing correctly.) With the royal icing, I learned how to pipe apple blossoms, violet leaves, violets, victorian rose, daisy, daffodil, pansy, and primrose. Oddly, I don't like primroses in real life, however in royal icing, I love them!

I was disappointed to find out that for our final project I did not get to be creative and design my own cake. Rather the whole class was making the same cake design. It would only vary in color and arrangement of flowers. Feeling my creativity stifled, I begrudgingly followed direction and baked an oval cake, dirty iced it, and brought it to class. In class, we learned the basket weave technique, which was very time consuming and strenuous but with a beautiful result. The cake was completed with the royal icing flowers, rope border, and color flow bird.

 

Basket cake designed by Wilton Method of Cake Decorating, and made unique by my piping skills, flower arranging, and placement of birds.