First Cake Decorating Class

So today was the first of my four cake decorating classes. I am so excited! I learned a lot. I learned about how to correctly make the icing that you need to use to decorate. I learned the correct ingredients to put in. You know you can't use Crisco or an zero trans fat shortening in buttercream because it won't be stiff enough. Who knew? And you don't want to use butter because it's colored yellow and will affect the color of your frosting. You also want to use pure cane sugar in frosting as opposed to beet sugar.

I learned that it's better to bake one cake in a 3" by 8" pan instead of the regular cake pans. Then you pop it in the freezer and freeze it. When you are ready to use it, you use a tool that looks like a hack saw to cut it in half and then a cake lifter (huge spatula) to put the layers in seperate places. You use the bottom layer for the top and then it's perfectly flat. When you put a filling in between the layers you first pipe an edge of frosting around the inside edge of the bottom layer so the filling doesn't get out into your frosting on the sides of the cake.

And she showed us how to frost it to make it perfectly smooth and beautiful so you can decorate it later! We learned how to make stars today with a pastry bag and tip and then we could decorate cookies anyway we wanted using the stars. I made St. Patrick's day cookies.

Next week we frost our first cake! I already know more than I ever did and feel like the little bit of knowledge will greatly elevate what I make!