Wilton Class, Level 1, Session 2

Okay, so at Cake Decorating School, students have homework. You have to bring a cake (or if you don't want to bring a cake, you can buy a cake, use a styrofoam dummy cake, or the back of a cake pan covered with wax paper. However, I think all of these options are cheating and kind of missing the whole fun of being in a cake decorating class: you get to eat cake!) that's been iced.



Just for a second, please disregard the blinding shade of "Big Bird" yellow and focus on the lovely smoothness of the buttercream. Buttercream icing is actually tricky to smooth just using an icing spreader. It tends to go on like spackle and can look a lot like a poorly textured bathroom wall instead of a yummy, pretty cake. There is a trick to getting the texture of the icing smooth and pretty and it involves using a paper towel. Once the icing has formed a crust (when touched lightly the icing won't pull away from the cake and end up on your finger), you lay a non-textured paper towel (like Viva) over the cake and gentle rub the surface with a light touch. Or you can use a fondant smoother. However, I don't have one of these gadgets, so I had to improvise.


Yep, that is a jar of hair styling product that I used just this morning. However, it has a very smooth lid and when used in the whole smoothing-the-buttercream paper towel trick, well, it's quite handy. I think Alton Brown would be quite pleased that I didn't purchase a fondant smoother, being that it is a unitasker and all. So now my homework is ready to decorate, complete with a fancy white icing star border to hide the crap that covers the cardboard round. I'll post tomorrow with the results of Lesson 2: Decorating a Cake With So Much Icing That Just Looking at it Will Send You Into a Diabetic Coma.