Busy making buttercream, fondant, and MORE!

Many of you may know that I decorate cakes for fun.  Fondant doesn't necessarily like me, lol but we've been working together to fix that, lol.  I'm self taught, starting around age 19 or so, and have made plenty, including several tiered wedding cakes.  But I couldn't make rose...the right way, anyway.  Mine always looked....WRONG, lol.  So, a few years ago, my oldest and I took a flower making class.  The oldest enjoyed it well enough, I just didn't want to take it alone, but when I went back for the gumpaste class, she said to count her out, lol.


I even made my own wedding cake a few years back.  I didn't have time to make
flowers for it, so I used silk roses and greenery.  As you can see, I didn't
even have time to work my homemade fondant well enough to smooth correctly, lol.
But it still turned out pretty, I think.


This weekend, my instructor was going to have a cake decorating challenge, but it seems not as many people want to join a 'challenge,' so she and I are going to do an on-site cake demonstration, each decorating a cake.  I'm also going to have a bunch of filled mini-cupcakes to decorate, and let others decorate to see how crummy their decorating skills are, and how much it can improve with just one Wilton class.  :) 

Anyway, my design for my cake includes a gumpaste and fondant tiara, and since I wanted everything on my cake to be edible, I needed to make the rubies and pink sapphires.  You may think this is easy, and actually it is, the hard part is getting the sugar gems to not stick together.  My youngesextt done a batch of watermelon with a break-away mold, and I done red cinnamon (which, btw, is STRONG!)

Mine were in a mold that had at least 1/2" of space between each stone...this did not fair well for me.  The sugar was difficult to stream from one stone-well to the next without letting too much pool between them, ugh.  Out of about 50 of hers, only 3 didn't come out right.  Out of 25-30 of mine, only about 15 resemble anything like a gem, lol.  But, I'll still be using them.

She helped me make a huge tub of pure white buttercream...of course, I should say 'white decorator's' icing because I rarely use butter flavoring.  I tend to use a bit of clear vanilla, and clear almond extract.  This blend tends to taste less over-powering, so I usually leave the butter flavor out.  Then I made a batch of gumpaste while she colored a small batch of fondant and a small patch of icing for me.

I plan to be very prepared by having anything done that I can so I can spend my time decorating, rather than preparing, mixing, and such, blah, the boring parts of cake decorating.  I don't plan on using any fondant or gumpaste flowers/decorations other than the tiara, just icing.  I have aquired some new silicone fondant molds that I plan to use on the cake tho. 

I'll take a picture of my finished cake on Saturday and share it with ya'll!