Pretty Cakes (part 2)

Round two of my cake decorating class wrapped up tonight. Over the last few weeks, I learned how to make flowers with royal icing I have to say, royal icing is a pain in the butt to make and use and I doubt I will ever use it again. I definitely prefer buttercream. The nice thing about royal icing is that it dries stiff so you can make flowers that stand up a bit and they won't flop over. Plus, once the flowers dry you can save them for months and they are still good to use. The down side is they aren't really very tasty, so they look good on a cake but you end up picking them off anyway. Here are a couple of pictures of my final cake:

You will notice the basket weaving on the sides of the cake. We learned how to do that tonight. I love it because it hides all flaws and looks pretty impressive but it is very easy. The writing was an afterthought which is why "Birthday" is kind of squished. You should always start with the writing so that the words are evenly spaced out. Lesson learned for next time. Oh well, it isn't anyone's birthday anyway, I am just taking this cake to my Tuesday night Community Group.

Unfortunately, Community Groups kind of disband over the summer so I am not sure what I am going to do with all the cakes I make in round three! Next month is fondant which is where you can get really creative. I am looking forward to learning how to work with it. Let me know if you want to help me eat cake, otherwise after taking a picture, it will probably end up in garbage. I mean, seriously... what is one person supposed to do with a whole cake?!?