Cake Decorating

I am back tracking. This post should have been typed up Monday April 11. I wrote it up but didn't get to post it until this morning.

My daughter and I decided to take a Cake Decorating Class at our local Micheal's Craft store. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong! Cooking has never been a talent of mine. I have been married nearly 20 years and this is still something that just does not come easy to me. I try and I try, but my family has just come to terms that I burn everything I cook.

My children will actually cheer when I choose not to cook and order a pizza instead. Obviously if I can't cook, I do not even attempt to try baking.

But... my daughter took a baking class at school and really enjoyed it. I offered to sign her up for an evening cake decorating class. Since she is only 14, I had to sign up, too.

So our first class is tonight. We got our instruction booklets on Friday. I thought we could make a boxed cake mix and bring store bought frosting. No way! The boxed cake mix was fine, but we have to make our own frosting from scratch. The recipe is in the booklet. I was told it is a very simple recipe. I have never made frosting in my life! Then not only do we have to make this recipe from scratch, but we have to double it and since two of us are going, we have to double it twice. So now I am doing chemistry and math along with cooking. Yikes!

Of course, the non-baker that I am, I did not have any of the ingredients, so off to the store to buy everything. I got home, mixed the ingredients EXACTLY word for word, measurement by measurement as the book instructed. I ended up with the largest batter of sweet cement you could ever imagine! My mixer motor was burning up just trying to turn this stuff in the bowl. This was not turning into a good day.

First order of business, My darling husband fixed me a tall Margarita, then I texted the only baking friend I could think of that actually does make all her own frosting. She texted back "Relax, just add a little more milk." This seemed to work. The batter definately looks creamier now. I think I am OK. Tim, My loving 16 year old teen tasted it and in that loving caring way only a teen can say it, told me "This tastes like Crap!" Great! What do I do now. I added some more vanilla extract and that seemed to make it taste a litle better.

Whew! The cakes are all baked and came out fine. The frosting is in the fridge and ready for class. Now I can relax a little. I start reading my class book to see what else we need to bring...

You have got to be kidding me! The frosting I just stressed over is the wrong thickness! Half of our frosting should be thin for the cakes themselves, and the other half should be medium for the decorating.

Time for another Margarita!

So now I dump half the frosting back into my freshly washed sparkling clean mixer, again. Add a little milk until I think it is "Medium". Believe me, if you are not a baker you have no idea what Medium means, I know I have no clue. I added too much milk, so now I have my "thin" frosting. I have one shot left to get the rest correct. It is a little on the thin side but I am going with it.

This whole Cake Decorating was supposed to be fun. I am already thinking...my frosting will be the worst in class and I'll get kicked out of Cake Decorating for Beginners. Alright, maybe that is a little extreme but somewhere along the line I have lost a gene or two I should have been born with. Women are supposed to be born with Motherly instincts, this I do have, but I thought they should also know how to do simple things like cook food for their families and whip up a batch of frosting when the occasion called for it.

Tonight we shall see. The class starts in about an hour. Maybe if I take a shower, dress nice, put on some makeup, no one will notice my awful, tastes-like-crap, too thin to frost, frosting.


Tuesday - Arpil 12

All that stress for nothing. The class was actually fun, though I missed the part that we were supposed to already have our frosting colored and in their frosting bags, ready to go. After spending the first 30 minutes of class getting caught up, we actually enjoyed the class. Of course my daughter's cake actually looked like the design she was going for. She had to go over the top and add all these extra swirls and dots and swiggles just to rub it in a little that she did get that gene that passed me by.

Next week we need to bring cupcakes and MORE frosting.