Time well spent: cake decorating course

By lovinghomemade on July 4, 2013 • ( 15 )

Here’s one I decorated earlier!

My lovely friend Shenny gave me a voucher she couldn’t use which was to put towards a cake decorating course and this is the result! It’s not a completely finished cake as we ran out of time, but I still think it looks amazing. I had such a great time and learnt so much.

Stefi Jakab is a Cordon Bleu trained pâtisserie chef who teaches as well as creating amazing bespoke cakes and it was great to spend the day with her.

Despite knowing the basics of how to ice a cake, I had no idea how to put them together properly, or how the cake could come apart into its separate layers again for cutting. And would you guess there are three cake boards of two different thicknesses in this picture?

I’ve seen spacers in the cake decorating shops but didn’t actually know exactly what they were for, or how they were used. Now I do, and I think the roses look amazing between the two layers.

Stefi showed me how to do the royal icing pearls and lines on these two cakes and I discovered that it is not as impossible as it looks. Hurrah!

Flowers!

Flowers are quite time consuming to make but probably not as difficult as they look. Stefi showed me how to make and colour roses, calla lilies and leaves, as well as the ones on “stems”. It turns out I had cutters designed for those!

But a good cake is not just about how it looks. There is no point having something that is beautiful on the outside if it’s hiding an ugly interior. Which is also a good life lesson, I think.

Inside are two delicious sponge cakes, one vanilla and one chocolate, each cut into three perfect layers. Stefi had made the cakes herself and she showed me how to level and cut the layers properly and then get them back together in the same position that they came apart.

And we filled and covered them with a totally delicious raspberry cream, a layer of jam and a layer of strawberries.

It took a lot less time to take them apart than to put them together and I can’t even tell you how quickly we are getting through them…

Thank you so much, Shenny, I had a wonderful day. And thank you Stefi, for being so patient and sharing some of your amazing knowledge and skill!