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.

April Vacation Yah!!

We are off for April vacation. Thank goodness. I so need a break. I am not expecting this week to be too relaxing, though. Both kids have practices and games for baseball and softball. Tim starts his new job this week, so I am sure I will be getting up early to drive him to the train station. The bus stop is 2 houses away but why take this bus when he can guilt his mom into driving him.

Kelly and I have our next Cake Decorating class this Monday. That is a whole blog post in itself.

Celtics are in the play-offs so we will probably get tickets for at least one of the home games.

I was hoping to take a trip out to Six Flags but our schedule is closing in on us.

I have been putting page kits together hoping to get in some scrapping time this week.

Last weekend I did an online scrapping retreat. TRUE SCRAP. It was excellent and I didn't have to pay for a hotel room or meals. I even got to take a could classes still in my pajamas. There were 12 classes in all and a few make and takes, I still have not tried the make and takes yet.

All the classes were very well done, but I think the one I got the most from was a class called Stash Diving by Shimelle (sorry, I forget her last name) Her main emphasis was to stop saving your favorite paper for that elusive lay-out idea that may NEVER come. Use your paper when you buy it. You loved it enough to spend your hard earned money on it, so use it! I have done that some thing so many times, not only with really cool paper but those expensive Jolee 3D stickers. I love them, buy them then don't want to waste them because of what I spent on them so they sit on my Clip-It-Up for years and just look pretty.

Since taking this class, I have been doing just as she suggest. Putting kits together and cutting up my paper! Yes, before I even have a photo selected to go on the paper, I am cutting all my new paper up, matching it with cardstock and putting it aside until I pull out some photos and scrap them. Just today alone I had to have made about 30 kits ready for photos and journaling.

So in between my taxi service this coming week I may get more pages done towards my 2011 challenge of a page a day.

I hope everyone else that is off this week gets to enjoy their time with their kids and even by themselves, if they prefer.

Happy Scrapping!