Ace of Cakes 102

Although I was signed up for a CAKE decorating class it never occurred to me that I would have to take an actual cake to class with me each time. Again- welcome to the dreamworld I live in. I thought we would be decorating on those styrofoam "cakes" that they use on Ace of Cakes/Cake Boss/Every other cake show on TV. 

As I was mixing my cake at 10 o'clock Monday night I strongly considered showing up with a styrofoam cake so I could head to bed. I decided to play by the rules and promised myself I would get an earlier start next time. (I'll let you know how that goes).

After wheeling my luggage cart with my cake supplies, cake carrier, and cake tackle box into the classroom I realized that I forgot to bring a cardboard base for my cake. No fear, the class is held in Hobby Lobby so I ran to Wilton Wonderland to pick up the rest of my supplies. 

Joy, our instructor, told us to get our stencil of choice out so that we could practice doing gel transfers. I loved this technique! We were able to choose from the following stencils: fish (not thanks), cupcake (my personal fave), or a hamburger (chris' vote). I decided that since Chris was going to be doing most of the cake consumption I would surprise him with a hamburger. The surprise part didn't really work though because I had to mix all of my icing colors at home and it was pretty obvious I wasn't making a brown, red, and green cupcake. 

Back to the gel transfers…you use piping gel trace your design on parchment paper and then you flip it over and smooth the gel onto the cake. It's pretty cool. It's a good way to ensure that you don't have a hamburger that looks half eaten or falling apart on your cake. 

First we torted our cake, iced a dam, and filled the dam. English term for people that aren't fluent in cake speak: we cut our cakes in half, squirted some icing around the edges so our filling of choice didn't fall off the edge and then filled up the center. I picked milk chocolate pudding. Yum.

I'm sure you're wondering why I have so many brown dots on my icing and why the board looks wet around the cake. Well I made my icing wrong. You make it with 1 cup vegetable shortening and 1lb. powered sugar and like the goof I am I measured 16 fluid oz with my fluid measuring cup. Well that was only HALF of the sugar I needed to. I had vanilla flavored vegetable shortening. YUCK! Oh well- I worked with it.

After we iced our cakes it was time to do the gel transfer. You outline the stencil on parchment paper with piping gel and then slap the parchment paper on your cake.

After you have your gel transfer on your cake you can start with the middle color (brown hamburger patty) and go out from there.

I think I did a pretty decent job for my first try, except for the fact that it was pretty inedible. 

Looking for Edward Cullen

Ahh- how I love Washington State. 

Well this is actually the Rockies...yes I am that lady taking pictures from the airplane window! We changed flights in San Francisco. I wish we could have stayed there for a few days too! 

My final destination is Seattle, WA. You can see Mt. Rainier in the middle of the picture.

For all you Twi-Hards I will keep an eye out for the Cullens. ;) Forks is about 3 hours from here so I probably won't have much luck. However- it IS rainy today. 

I would really like to find Jacob more than Edward.

                            

Hopefully we can go to Pike's Place Market and some other touristy things before we head home!

Ace of Cake 101

Nana and Grampy signed me up for a cake decorating class as part of my birthday present this year. I had to wait until the semester was over to sign up because there is no way I could have focused on polynomials when I had more important things like how I would decorate my next cake to be worrying about…

I'm not going to lie the first class was a little lame. Our instructor should be employed by the Home Shopping Network the way she was trying to sell us all of the Wilton products. She was running out of adverbs towards the end of the class for all of the "awesome cake pans", "super spatulas", and "best in the industry cake belts". (more on the cake belts in a later post) Anyway- you get the idea. 

For the first class we had to bring 6 flat cookies. I cheated and bought the cookies in a roll and baked them at the last minute the night before. 

After an hour and a half of the Wilton Product Preview we were told to get out our icing and tip#12 so we could learn how to make stars/basic flowers. 

Here is my first attempt:

I had my first rodeo with this technique while I was decorating Jenny's birthday cake which I later dumped into the floor board of my car. That is another story for another day, but here is a little example of how my day went.

Let's move on- every time I think about day I get a little sad.

Anyway- at the end of the class I was excited to get out of the HSN wormhole that I had been living in for the last two hours of my life and was looking forward to class #2. Then we were given the list of items that we needed to bring to our second class. I was a little overwhelmed to say the least but I decided there would be a hamburger in my future. You'll see what I mean. 

Don't get me wrong Nana/Grampy- it was actually a lot of fun. I was just imagining Duff from Ace of Cakes to be leading our class and that we would be building Princess Castles on our first run. Obviously I was wrong. 

We only have 4 people in our class which is pretty cool. I can't imagine sharing my table with anyone.

Well stay tuned for more Ace of Cakes 101...

Max Nugget Giddens

Born: April 14, 2010

Adopted on: May 22, 2010

9 wks as of 6/9/10

Currently weighs 14 lbs and growing at an alarming rate!

Eating lunch with all of his brothers and sisters

He wanted to take a nap so he crawled into Ryan and Ashley's entertainment center

This is the picture that he will be embarrassed about when he is older. He likes to be wrapped up like a baby and then he falls asleep wrapped up like a pig in the blanket. No pun intended. 

This is his 2nd favorite sleeping spot. 

He likes to tuck his legs under the sofa and take a snooze. 

This is his favorite trick. When you put his leash on him 

he locks all of his legs and does NOT move!

Aww but look how cute he looks in this picture.

Today I caught him trying to climb up in the chair to get to his food bowl. 

So Chris was pretty upset with me yesterday because he went to Petsmart to get Max's Micro Chip installed...well low and behold once upon a time I was there to get his flea treatment and they asked me my name and the dog's name. I said my name is Brittany and the dog's name is Max. Then they asked what Max's last name is. I said Giddens, although I was very tempted to say Brown (thankfully I didn't because that would have made this long and drawn out story even worse). Well they went ahead and did me the favor of changing my last name for me a little ahead of schedule. Well- when Max got Micro Chipped Chris asked what information would be on it. The lady explained to him that Brittany Giddens is the owner and that her address is linked to chip. I thank my lucky stars that I was not there to see Chris' disappointment/anger when he realized I was the owner, well at least according to them. For some strange reason they will not add information to Max's file. I think it's kind of silly, but I just realized that a girl that was in every single class of my elementary career is the office manager at Banfield so I am going to ask her to pull some strings if possible. 

Long story short: He came home and told me that Max's owner isn't even a real person. 

It was pretty funny. For me at least, not so much for Chris.