Hey I’m back!!!

Having just started school, I got back into the swing of working on my senior project. What is a senior project, you might ask? Great question! At my school, all seniors are required to pursue a project for the majority of the school year, whether it be revamping a fedex truck into a moving home or taking up fashion design. As long as the teachers approve it, and you have a mentor (an expert in the subject to guide you along in your project) and/or a class, you can do it. So, if you couldn’t already tell from the website, I’m super interested in baking. However, I’m not a very good cake decorator. So  I decided to take up cake decorating as my project.

I have enrolled in a Wilton decorating course, and had my first class on Monday. Because it was the first class, it was relatively basic, but it was still really interesting! I learned lots of interesting tips. It was somewhat of a refresher, since I’ve done a lot of reading on how to make a cake in the past, but it was still useful. Here are some of my fav tips:

• When you put the batter into the pan, make sure to firmly tap the bottom of the pan, either with your knuckles or against the counter (don’t worry, you won’t hurt it). This help dissipate random air pockets that are caught in the batter.
• Make sure to cool the cake uncovered. My instructor mentioned that it was common to cover cakes with a towel when cooling them. I had never heard of that, but for those of you who do, I would advise against it. The cake is still quite hot, and the heat coming off the cake will get caught on the towel, condensate, and then will drip back into the cake, making the cake somewhat soggy.
• When icing the cake, make sure the cake is completely, completely cool. The icing will melt otherwise.
• To keep those pesky crumbs on the cake, spread a super thin layer of icing, known as the crumb layer, on the cake. It doesn’t have to look pretty at all yet, this just seals the crumbs in. Once you finish spreading, put the cake in the fridge for 30 mins-1 hour to allow the crumb layer to harden.
• When you begin spreading your icing, make sure your spatula never touches the cake. This way you can ensure the crumbs never make it to the surface of the icing.

Most of this stuff you can find on other websites or on youtube for visual how-to’s. I hope this helps with any cake-making endeavors. Next class, I have to ice my cake based on how she showed us last time. Pictures of that will be posted!

Until next time 🙂