Last night my mom & I decorated our latest batches of baked stuffs for her office Bake Sale today. Mom took the Wilton Beginner Decorator Course last month and came away with some amazing SKILLZ! I'm so impressed. Especially after I actually tried my hand at some of the techniques and decided I have no natural ability to pipe, and an attention span of about forty-one seconds. My dark-chocolate-white-chocolate-bird-nest-cupcakes turned out pretty cute, depsite my initial reaction ("DAH - FAIL! AGAIN!") to the concave shape of the cakes when they came out of the oven. I won't be using that recipe for cupcakes again (from the Cupcake Deck - chocolate cupcakes with chocolate buttercream). While they taste amazing, and the batter is so good it's worth making just to eat it out of the bowl, in three attempts they just never rose. Mom said it's because I used the wisk attachment to my mixer; I should be using the paddle? (Anyone? Anyone?)
We loved my little baby three-tiered cake! My mom's was a 6", mine was 4".
In the pics below, you'll see that my mom had the ingenious idea of using a wine bottle for a rose-pic-holder (to the shock and awe of all her dry, un-fun Wilton classmates), and that her cake (on the lower right) is REALLY FABULOUS while my cake (lower left) is REALLY LAME. Luckily she let me use one of her early practice roses as a topper. The leaves I piped around it totally ruined it. I shudder at their sliminess. My dot edge isn't too terrible, but it's nothing like her shell edge.
I bet all of my mom's co-workers detest her this morning for bringing in such lovely creations. ;) Jealousies. (Evil laugh.)
