Not Quite the Ace of Cakes... yet.

When my husband's appetite was lost due to his lymphoma, we started watching The Food Network. We hoped that seeing delectable delights might perk up his digestive system. We have watched little else since October. In that time I became addicted to watching Ace of Cakes. That addiction quickly expanded to the various cake decorating "challenge" shows that the network airs weekly. By January I was surfing cake decorating websites and at the beginning of February I found that a local craft store offered decorating classes. I signed up. There were about 12 people the first night, but we were down to 8 by the third night. Many of those had other obligations this week and our final class boasted 3 warm bodies other than that of the instructor.

In those 4 weeks I have learned that the beautiful piping designs we see done so effortlessly on TV, are not effortless. I'm not sure when I sprouted so many thumbs. My kitchen smells like sugar and vanilla. I smell like icing. Pink, purple, yellow and white smears of hardened icing can be found on nearly every surface of the kitchen. The dogs police up any cake droppings, so thankfully we don't have pink, purple, green, yellow and white footprints throughout the house. Half the "dust" in the air, is probably not real dust, but rather confectioner's sugar. Can one get white lung disease from sugar?



At any rate, the last class of the beginner's course was last night. I'd fought pink icing roses for 4 days trying to get them to look smooth and uniform like the photographs in the manual. While my flowers looked like roses, they looked like roses that had been attacked by hordes of aphids. Rather than smooth, rounded petals, my roses had the lacy look of carnations. I tried stiffer icing. I tried thinner icing. I tried firmer pressure on the piping bag. I finally gave up in absolute frustration.



When I got to class last night, I explained my problem to the instructor. I told her I was failing miserably in getting the icing consistencies correct because my petals all looked chewed. "NO NO! It's not you! It's the Crisco! I'm sorry. I should have warned you!" Apparently, when Crisco removed the trans fats from their shortening the change sent ripples out through the pastry decorating world. One of those tsunami sized ripples wiped out butter cream icing roses.



Thankfully, next session we will be moving into Royal Icing flowers and leave the Crisco cream decorations behind. Also thankfully, the only cake we have to bake is for the final class. For the past month I've had to produce at least one cake per week. I sure don't need to eat this much cake, William's appetite isn't recovered enough to eat cake and the only one here willing to eat a couple of pieces a day is John. Even as I type I have a practice cake in the refrigerator that is only half eaten and an entire cake full of lacy pink roses that I decorated for our final class sitting on the dining table. Having a month off from eating and storing cakes is going to be FABulous. Although... I'm willing to bet I'll just HAVE to bake one just for "practice" at some point during that time.



My best friend, Daphne, went through this course a few years ago. She sent me much of her decorating equipment when I told her I was going to try my hand at the craft. I didn't want her to send all these things because she was so brilliant at the art of decorating, I didn't want to have all her stuff if she suddenly decided she wanted to start making cakes again. She told me that no one wanted her to ever do cakes again. She was making cakes all the time. Daph's cakes became like my zucchini. People would shutter their windows, lock their doors and not answer the phone if they saw her car. She was even taking gigantic decorated sheet cakes to her fitness center every week!



I can see how this could happen. I have already told everyone I know to sit down and write a list of at least 10 people they know that they can hand off cakes to when they get sick of them. I don't visit a fitness center, but there are a lot of people who work at William's Oncology clinic. If nothing else, I have 11 hooved family members who would LOVE a sugar coated carrot cake from time to time.



Here is a photo of the final cake in my beginner's class.