Tuesday night I started the Wilton cake decorating course 2: flowers and cake design. I loved everything that I learned during course 1 and so I wanted to take it a step further and learn how to do more intricate flowers. In this course we will learn how to make several types of flowers each week and then the last week we will put them all together and make a pretty cake. That will be nice to not have to have a complete cake made each week (plus I won’t have all that yummy goodness sitting around begging me to eat it!), although it’s not quite as exciting to show off a few plain flowers as it is to show a whole finished cake.
But anyway…
The first class we learned a little about gum paste and fondant. I am not a fondant fan and thankfully the rest of the weeks we will be using icing to make our flowers, but it was fun just to learn a little bit about it – just enough to know how to use it if needed. I really couldn’t tell you the difference between fondant and gum paste, all I know is that one dries faster than the other but I can’t remember each one. We mixed the gum paste and fondant together, then rolled it out and basically treated it like Play-Doh.
The first flower we learned how to make was called a button flower (because the little circle in the middle is shaped like a button, I think). This one was really easy: tint and roll out the fondant, press it into this cookie-cutter-mold-thing, it cuts out the flowers for you, then stack them together.
Here’s a little tip: if you are planning to take the Wilton cake decorating course 2 and you have a friend taking the same class – pool your money together and just buy one package of fondant and one package of gum paste, unless you are planning to take courses 3 and 4 (both about fondant). In fact, one thing of fondant and one thing of gum paste would probably be plenty for 4 people. I didn’t know anyone in my class to split it with so now I have quite a bit of fondant and gum paste left with no intentions of using it. I’m sure I’ll figure out something.
The second flower we learned to make were pansies. These were also pretty easy and I like that they look a lot more like really flowers than the button flowers.
And that was week 1 of course 2!
Don’t forget to enter to win the That Works for Me! e-book (btw, you don’t have to have an e-reader to read/use this book – all you need is a computer…just in case that was preventing you from entering)
Pretty! I think the course must have changed since I took it because we didn’t use any fondant in the second course – all the flowers were made with royal icing.