Monday, June 27, 2011

Lesson 4 Course 1 - Wilton Cake Decorating Class


Here they are, our final cakes! My daughter and finished our last class in Course 1 of the Wilton Cake Decorating class. Don't they look so elegant and delicious! I know to pretty to even want to cut into and think about eating. 


Today we learned the ribbon rose and how to write with icing. My cake above I chose to use the ribbon roses. I could have practiced more and really turned out  a few good roses but to be honest two hours of class time really flies by, I didn't want to waste time trying to get a rose to turn out that I really liked I would have needed much longer. ;)


So here's my finished cake above! 


My daughter decided to make her best friend a cake. She also chose to do the ribbon roses, isn't she a natural! I'm just saying! She really did not feel good and wanted to back out of class today, I told her it was our last class she had to attend. Her ribbon roses look amazing, and  she went ahead and chose to write on her cake. 


Her finished cake above isn't it beautiful! 


We cut into my cake this evening and even right out of the fridge it was moist and delicious!

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Smoothing Buttercream Icing

Here's our 2 cakes ready to be taken to class for decoration! I am really working on getting the icing as smooth as I can, have another round of smoothing that I'll do before we go to class.

Friday, June 24, 2011

Flowering Basil

I was researching the internet for information on the potted garden I have planted. I found out I am not supposed to let Basil flower for it will make the leaves taste bitter. I guess I didn't follow the rules because my Basil was flowering like crazy! I still have to figure out what to do with all the leaves/branches I have cut off.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

You say Tomato, I say Tomato!

Yes it is true! I have my very first tomato!!!

 Look at the size of the pepper! I counted 13 peppers on my Cayenne Pepper plant! 

The Lemon tree is still alive and kicking that's a great sign!
Not sure what happened to my strawberries when we went out of town for the weekend and left the plants for my daughter to tend to but even though the leaves are dry on the ends I have a red strawberry and more on the way!

Monday, June 20, 2011

Lesson 3- Wilton Cake Decorating Class


My daughter and I survived Lesson 3 of the Wilton Cake Decorating class. Today we were the second ones to class so we had great seats to spread out our stuff. Last week we were late, but we caught up pretty quickly. Have you ever heard the saying a messy cook is a good cook, well as I have said my daughter seems to be a natural at this cake decorating stuff, but boy was her station a mess she had icing caked up all around her work station. Good thing she had that bath towel down to work on. I hadn't seen a mess like that since making Gingerbread houses in her Kindergarten class. (Giggles) The top photo are the cupcakes I made after returning home. I had only really iced one cupcake in class so I wanted to play some more!
 

I wanted to show you the best ones first! I need the Wilton's icing gel stuff so that my icing will be smoother but as usual when I go to buy the things I really want or need my Hobby Lobby is always out of the item so I have to go to Wal-Mart or the other Hobby Lobby on the southern end of town.  I keep meaning to ask the Wilton Instructor, John if he makes  a commission on the sales in the stores because he is missing out on a lot of what I have had to spend elsewhere. I would feel bad if that is the case.


In Lesson 3, we learned how to make flowers, fill cupcakes with filling and use different flower making decoration tools.  We learned how to make the star drop flower, swirl drop flower, shell, rosette, leaves, the pompom flower, the shaggy mum, and how to use the flower nail. John, the instructor always throws in a few tips and tricks along the way. I blew up my cupcake overfilling it, then wait till you see my first pompom flower it is not good.


The Pompom flowers in hues of blue in the above picture on the bottom left. On the bottom left side is what it is supposed to look like that my daughter had made, she is letting hers dry so it will be easier to place onto the cupcake.  As for my disaster, I let the instructor use it as an example to show how to take it off of the parchment paper after it has dried using the Wilton Flower Lifter and place it on a cupcake. My icing was not dry but I didn't quite get the technique on my first go at it so it was okay with me for him to give the class an idea of what to do.


My attempt with the swirled flower above in pink.


My favorite was the rosette. The first one I attempted still had some yellow icing in the decorator bag and I filled it with some white and it made an amazing affect on the yellow/white rosette shown in the photo above.


The center cupcake is the shaggy mum.

In the above photo we have rosettes with leaves and the cupcake in blue has the shaggy mum affect as well as the swirled flower in the center.


The shell pattern shown wrapped around the pink rosette in the top left corner of the above photo is very hard for me to get down I will have to do a lot of practicing between now and next Monday's class. The last lesson of the decorating basics class. We will be making a final cake and decorating it with what we have learned from class.  I am so nervous!

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

American Potato Salad



Jami Sorrento was our June Daring Cooks hostess and she chose to challenge us to celebrate the humble spud by making a delicious and healthy potato salad. The Daring Cooks Potato Salad Challenge was sponsored by the nice people at the United States Potato Board, who awarded prizes to the top 3 most creative and healthy potato salads. A medium-size (5.3 ounce) potato has 110 calories, no fat, no cholesterol, no sodium and includes nearly half your daily value of vitamin C and has more potassium than a banana!

Unfortunately, my potato salad was full fat version no skimping here!  It was delicious! I couldn't hardly keep a bowl of it in the fridge for my cookout the next day. The family kept stealing bites all day & night. I finally found a recipe I love! I have tried numerous potato salads and this one is an All American Family Favorite!

Monday, June 13, 2011

Lesson 2- Wilton Cake Decorating Class



We made it through the second lesson of Wilton Cake Decorating class. These are our first cakes decorated. We both chose to do the cupcake pattern. I was going to do the rainbow, but I was worried about picking so many colors. Plus, since my daughter and I are both taking the class I thought it would be best to choose a pattern we could share icing colors and makes it easier on me. My cake is the top cake I have more learning to do to keep my circle round but I was still very pleased with how it turned out. My daughter's cake below, she made her circle pattern in blue and it was almost a perfect circle. She's a natural! We had some of the girls in class saying our cakes looked just like the book. So we felt pretty good about our cakes when we left class.


Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Wouldn't you like to be a Pepper to!


Look what I found this morning! My first pepper! He's so cute!!! You can't tell by this picture since I used my macro lens but it is pretty small but still noticeable!  :)

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

My 1st edible Garden!


My edible potted garden is looking good so far!! In this photo on the left is my tomato plant with herbs, the basil is almost as tall as the tomato plant and on right is my 2 pepper plants and 2 cilantro.

 See my tomatoes are flowering!! So excited! My neighbor said that once they flower they will start to produce. I am so tickled!!
 This is a lemon tree. I am not sure what to do with it. I guess it will need a bigger pot. But at least it is still alive so far! :D
And last but not least my strawberry plants. For some reason I forgot to photograph the plants in the strawberry planter. They do not look as good as this one. The ants seem to like that clay pot  container so I have this pot in a different location and look.. it is flowering too! :D

Monday, June 6, 2011

Lesson 1- Wilton Cake Decorating Class


My daughter and I had our first class today for the Wilton Cake Decorating Class. Our instructor John is awesome, I think we will love this class. We just new it would probably be older women in the class and boy were we mistaken. The class age ranged from 9 years old up to 65 and quite a large group wanting to learn the tricks.  For us, this is quality mother & daughter time and I am hoping my daughter might learn something else she likes to do. You never know she might be an instructor one day or baking for a living. Who knows where this might take her. I know I really enjoyed learning something new in the kitchen especially since I love to bake! I always wanted to play with those icing tools but never new what to do. The first lesson is making stars. My daughter picked it up right off the bat. I new she would be a natural. As for me I couldn't seem to keep my stars the same shape and size but it makes me giggly just knowing I did it! I am like a kindergartner all excited about their first day of school. I came home and decorated the top of my sandwich box from a fast food joint that we had for lunch just so I could practice more. I was out of cookies. The above photo are the cookies I decorated in class, the bottom photo's are the creative designs my daughter created. Now we can enjoy these tasty treats!!