The highlight of this week’s class was decorating a dummy cake, but we began by practicing how to cover a cake with royal icing and how to pipe several types of flowers.
Cakes can be finished with royal icing, ganache, or buttercream; for this session we used royal icing. I hadn’t learned a proper method for icing a cake smoothly before. My usual approach is to apply a thin layer of buttercream as a crumb coat so fondant adheres nicely, but the royal-icing technique was different. I forgot to take a photo of my iced dummy cake, yet it turned out smooth and neat. Without a photo I can’t prove it, but it looked good!
Piping flowers was enjoyable and instructive. The instructor made it look effortless, but when I tried piping the flowers myself I discovered it was more challenging than it seemed. Despite that, I did produce some attractive blooms. Eventually I started creating more “fantasy” flowers instead of trying to replicate specific real flowers, and that approach suited me well. The results were charming and playful.
The best part of the day was decorating the dummy cake itself. We used the piping techniques we’ve practiced over the past weeks and applied them to the cake. I covered mine in pastry-pink fondant first, then piped royal icing decorations on top. It went surprisingly well and I’m very pleased with the final look.
Next week we’ll put these techniques to work on a real cake, and I’m already looking forward to it.