Baking Fun!

Summer of 2011 was the first summer since I started college in August of 2007 that I didn't take any summer classes. Each summer I would typically take 1-3 classes to try and get ahead to lessen my course load for the following fall semester. Most summer classes offered at UH are freshman or sophomore level courses, so they don't offer anything I need to take anymore. With that being said, it freed up a lot of my time allowing me to do things that I actually want to do. I picked up a few hobbies this summer particularly cake decorating. I am taking the first cake decorating course, Cake Decorating Basics, at Michaels in Webster. This class is held once a week every Thursday for about four weeks. I am taking this class with two friends Veronica and Jaclyn. Veronica is a friend that I met late last year and Jaclyn is a new friend that I met through Veronica.

Today is our third class and I am so excited! We are going to learn how to decorate cupcakes and how to make flowers. I will make sure to post pictures of my end products. The classes are very informative and easy to understand for someone just starting out. The instructor Holly is also very sweet and patient. I definitely want to continue on and take courses two and three.

For our first class we decorated plain flat cookies with stars. You can make all kinds of shapes and designs just using a star tip. I decorated more than just two cookies, but these were the ones I decorated for my husband Matt and the only ones I took a picture of. By the way these were peanut butter cookies with homemade buttercream icing.

For our second class we decorated a cake with homemade icing and a design. I  baked a strawberry cake and decorated the cake with vanilla icing which I colored myself. I chose to decorate a cake with a fish because my husband loves his pet fish! We have two aquariums with various types of fish.

First we practiced pipetting  our design on the practice board until we were able to get it right.

Then we iced our cake. I chose blue to represent water. Icing a cake is not as easy at it looks. This was a strawberry cake with dyed buttercream icing.

Finally the finished product!