Cake 1, Class 3-- Some cupcakes :)

I had my 3rd class in my Cake 1 series tonight.  We covered the first half of the rose, drop flowers, cupcake ideas, figure piping, and the shell border.

I brought 8 cupcakes to decorate tonight-- and had about 7 minutes to decorate.  :oP  Also bear in mind the mess of frosting in various consistencies and colors that I had going on by the end of class...  Parchment bags and tips everywhere!

The cupcake up top is just drop flowers with tip #21 and some stems and centers with tip #1.

To practice figure piping, I made a cupcake with a little portrait of Lola (my dog) on it:

The larger (almost) white sections were piped with round tip #12, and the details again with tip #1.  Ignore the purple.  It happens when you swap tips/bags/colors haphazardly. :)

Some more drop flowers...

 

A different icing style.. and a clown. :)

Not bad for 7 mins of decorating, but nothing nearly as exciting as what's to come this week.

My birthday is this Thursday, but I'm celebrating on Saturday.  For this momentous occasion, I am planning to make a tiered cake.  Since I only needed 8 cupcakes for class, I dedicated the rest of the batter to making the top tier for my birthday cake. 

For the cupcakes (and top tier) I used a good old-fashioned Funfetti cake mix.  For my top tier, I used 6" round pans.  Since cake mixes are particularly prone to crowning (rising in the middle and being more well-done on the edges), I decided to try Wilton's Bake Even Strips.  These strips are moistened, wrapped around your cake pan, and pinned in place before putting the pan in the oven.  Then you bake as usual (at a temperature no higher than 350).  Look at the difference:

That's the cake EXACTLY as it came out of the pan.  I was impressed.  You can see the bake-even strip rolled up next to it, and next to that, my new love, Pam Baking. 

This Pam spray somehow incorporates flour into the mix (in lieu of greasing and flouring) and smells AMAZING.  As I invariably got a little on the floor as I was spraying the pan, my dog was jubilantly licking it up.  And as you can see, the cakes came out very cleanly-- no sticking. 

Ahh... the beginnings of my birthday cake.

The bottom tier is going to be a from scratch chocolate cake from Margaret Braun's Cakewalk book.  And probably a mocha buttercream... I'm salivating already.

More cake to look forward to this week-- look for another post Saturday or Sunday at the latest.

And if you ever have any questions for me, please feel free to comment!  I can either reply to you or write a whole post dedicated to your comment.