Wilton Fondant & Gum Paste Course – Class 2
Yay! We got to play with fondant this week!! What weird gunk! It feels kind of like that tacky rubbery stuff that you use to stick things to the wall. And it tastes just like sugar. My instructor showed us how to flavor our fondant, though, so I made mine vanilla. I used a lemon cake recipe from my All You Magazine (best magazine ever, if you ask me) and a buttercream recipe from Cake Central that tasted way better than the Class Buttercream. It contained butter and shortening, though I think next time I will use slightly more shortening and less butter; the icing didn’t harden like it is supposed to, meaning I couldn’t make it as smooth as I would have liked… Another problem is that my cake didn’t rise for some reason, but it tasted great anyway. Definitely the best-tasting cake I’ve made yet.
In class, we covered our cakes with fondant, which I found to be relatively easy. Of course, it looked flawless under some lights, but under other lights I could see a dent there, a fingerprint here…oh well, my first try. I’d say the most difficult and annoying thing is trying to keep the fondant from drying out. It dries fast!! You have to keep it covered all the time in shortening and plastic wrap. If it sits for any length of time, it needs to be re-kneaded. Needless to say, my arms got tired very fast. But I guess it’s a good work-out…
My instructor then let us “play” with decorating our cakes for most of class. She demonstrated a few things, but let us do whatever we want. Of course, I wanted to do one of the cakes in the book, but soon realized I didn’t have the time. I finished my cake at home:
I’m not in love with the design or anything, but it’s okay for a start.
At the end of class, we made the base for a carnation out of gum paste. I couldn’t get it right for some reason, so I will have to make another one before class. Next week, we are spending all our time learning flowers. No cake to bring, which makes me both happy and sad. I signed up to take Course 3, but so far there are just 2 of us on the list, which means it will probably get cancelled. I may have to go somewhere else to take it. We’ll see.
Wilton Fondant & Gum Paste Course – Class 1
I started the Wilton Fondant & Gum Paste course last night. I am pretty excited about working with fondant. It seems to be much less messy than buttercream and much more forgiving. In the class, we just watched our instructor color and roll fondant and use it to cover a cake, which she than decorated with draping, hearts and a daisy, She also gave us suggestions for borders and showed us how to cover our cakeboard, which, unless you’re doing something super-fancy, seems like a huge waste of fondant to me… And that stuff is not cheap. About $6.79 to cover one cake! I plan to make my own in the future, but I did buy a box of the ready-made for next week’s cake. (Since I don’t know much at all about fondant, I thought I’d get a feel for it with the store-bought stuff so I have something to compare it to when I make it myself.)
I purchased some of the necessary supplies, which included:
- The Wilton Fondant & Gum Paste Class Kit
- A 20 inch rolling pin (you could use any, but I didn’t have one at home that I could use)
- Ready – To-Use Fondant in White
- Ready-To-Use Gum Paste
- Roll & Cut Mat
- Cutter/Embosser (My instructor said you could use a pizza cutter.)
- Fondant Smoother
- Rolling Pin Guide Rings
We have to bring a buttercream-iced cake next week, which we will cover and decorate in class. I am looking forward to it.
Looking for a better Buttercream…
I started the Wilton Fondant and Gum Paste class tonight. I will tell you more about that later. For now, I am looking for a delicious Buttercream Icing recipe that isn’t super sweet like the Wilton Class Buttercream recipe. It is all powdered sugar and shortening. I am looking for something that contains shortening, is pure white (or really close) and is tasty and not crazy sugary. Can someone help me? I know it exists. My teacher made a cake for class today so she could demonstrate some things and then she let us eat it. She did not use the Class Buttercream Icing, but since she owns her own business, she was not inclined to give me her recipe. I don’t blame her. It was delicious. It was pure white and had the same consistency as the class buttercream. It just wasn’t all sugary. Any ideas?
Edit: Here is the Wilton Class Buttercream Icing recipe, so you know what I’m not looking for.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup solid vegetable shortening
- 1 teaspoon clear vanilla extract
- 4 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar (approximately 1 lb.)
- 2 tablespoons milk
- 1 tbl. Meringue Powder
The Grocery Game and why you should play it
I first heard about The Grocery Game almost a year ago on a local news program and I decided to check it out. It has been totally worth it. I never spent too much time worrying about coupons before. I always thought saving a dollar here and 55 cents there would never add up to much. But the great thing about The Grocery Game is that it shows you how to maximize the value of your coupons. By telling you when to use your coupons, in correlation with store sales, instead of “saving a dollar here and 55 cents there,” you end up saving 40, 50, 60–up to 100% off of the retail price. People have even been known to get paid to take some items off store shelves. ; )
Yes, you have to pay to play, but it’s hardly a drop in the bucket; it comes to $1.25 a week for a list at one store and $1.87/wk for two. Plus the cost of buying a paper each week. (Make sure you purchase the one with the highest circulation in your area.) And yes, you could do this yourself and save yourself the fee. There are sites that are free where people post deals that they find at their stores, but I like to let TGG do the work for me for a few reasons:
- I don’t have a huge amount of time and I’m lucky if I get to scan the sales ad each week.
- I don’t know what the best deals are. Is $2 the best price for this product or can you get it cheaper?? I don’t know, but the List will tell you by color coding which deals are great, which are just okay and which to stay away from.
- TGG is called a “game” for a reason. It is kind of fun if you like to spend, like to save, like to try new things, like to challenge yourself and like to feel like you got something for almost nothing. You go through the List, pick out what you want and find the corresponding coupon. You go through the store, place the items in the cart, go through the checkout and if you got most of your groceries for half price, you’ve won.
Does this sound really dorky?? Probably. But we have a one-income household. And if you consider it your job to stretch a dollar, it’s pretty important to use whatever resources you have. I spend about 20 minutes every Sunday clipping coupons and when I strictly stick to the List, I save about 50% at the grocery store and around 75% at the drug store. I stopped tracking my savings long ago, but I know I was averaging about 60% savings overall.
When you have more “needs” items to purchase (aka: items you need that are not on the List), your savings are not as high, but the central idea around The Grocery Game is stockpiling. ”Buy more than you need now while it’s on sale so you won’t run out before it goes on sale again.” Doing this also means that you won’t have as many impromptu runs to the store for emergency items that always end up costing way more than the item you originally ran to the store for.
A lot of people seem to think The Grocery Game won’t work for them because they don’t eat boxed items or ready-to-eat foods, processed foods, whatever… But here’s a pic of a deal I got a few months ago that was so good that I had to take a picture of it:
Pasta, Bread, Pasta Sauce, Butter, Trash Bags, Soup: who doesn’t use that stuff? I cannot remember exactly what I paid for this lot, but I know that it somewhere between $20 and $25. And the best part is that the pasta was better than free. I bought 30 boxes in all and the store paid me $.25 per 2 boxes. Other great deals include a years worth of Electrasol tabs for about $.18 a box, $.25 for brand-name toothpaste, $.75 for brand-name cereal, $.48 for a jar of Skippy. It used to be that I would go to the the grocery store and spend $120 in a trip and have maybe one meal and a few lunches to show for it. Now I can make a meal on the fly from my stockpile anytime and if I want to make something special, I can afford the few “needs” items I need in addition to my List purchases.
I know I probably haven’t explained The Grocery Game to its full extent. I just wanted to share some of my experiences with it and why I think you should give it a try. Money is tight for a lot of people right now and it drives me bonkers to see people drop $200 on a cart that is barely full. It is worth the time to clip coupons and if you play The Grocery Game, it is even more worth it.
Play it here: The Grocery Game
And if you join after reading this, please put me down as your referral: mrymoon517@yahoo.com
Wilton Course 1 – Class 4
I finished Course 1! Yay!! I think class 4 went well. The scariest part was learning the Wilton Rose. I was afraid I wouldn’t get it at all. I had a hard time at first because my icing was a bit too stiff. I switched to using my medium and it worked out better, although my roses look more like some weird rose-hybrids. I kept getting raggedy edges and my instructor said it’s because I wasn’t using enough pressure, although I’m not so sure. It will take lots more practice to get it right.
We also learned the sweet pea, which is so cute!! I will have to use that soon. Then the bow and leaves, which are really easy.
I used this recipe to make my cake and buttercream. I was out of unsalted butter for the buttercream, so I used salted which means it came out mostly tasting like butter. I still think it was better than the class buttercream, but again, I shall have to keep looking. Another downside I discovered is that you can’t color it. It just makes streaks in the icing. Anyway, here’s my cake:
The good news is that I start the Fondant and Gumpaste course next Monday!! I would have liked to take all the classes in order, but their Course 2 doesn’t start until April and I can’t wait that long. I’m very excited about learning fondant, although I’ve heard it tastes worse than the buttercream… Oh well, it looks nice. ; )
DS’s 1st Birthday!!
We celebrated DS’s 1st Birthday yesterday!! Wow, that year went fast… I know he had no clue what was going on, but it was fun anyway. We had a small group of family and friends over for a party including dinner, cake and present-opening.
We had a Sesame Street-themed celebration. It is the one show DS watches sometimes (if only to distract him so I can grab a quick shower) and I loved it when I was little.
I made DS’s cake with my newly-acquired cake decorating skills. I tried a new recipe for the buttercream that was less sweet. We really liked it, although I’m going to keep searching for the perfect buttercream recipe.
DS seemed to enjoy it and that’s what’s important. ; )
Wilton Course 1 – Class 3
Class 3 last night! It went slightly better than last week. I tried a new cake recipe, which tasted better than the Wilton recipe I made before. I filled it with strawberry filling I purchased at Vanilla Bean. I iced it with the Class Buttercream Icing, but I clearly didn’t make it thin enough because it was somewhat difficult to spread and I still didn’t have enough!!
On the upside, I was able to decorate most of my cake in class. My medium consistency turned out really well. I had a difficult time practicing the center petal on the Wilton Rose, but everything else was relatively easy. Again, I stuck with the book and did the Clown Cake:
I put my clowns on my cake and my teacher says, “Aw, baby clowns!” Ha! I guess they are a little disproportionate. They do have little baby bodies. I think it makes them look more cute and less creepy, though.
Next week we learn the whole Wilton Rose, sweet peas and leaves. I’m not sure yet what cake I’ll do. The one major problem I’m having is that I can’t stand the taste of the Class Buttercream. It is just like eating straight sugar. It’s too sweet!!! I need to try something else just to ice the cake. Hmmm…
