The last class for Wilton Cake Decorating Course 1 focused on “The Wilton Rose.” There were also a couple other things, but for the most part it was the rose. Again, I needed to provide a cake. This time, I went for Devil’s Food Cake from scratch. I also used regular vanilla buttercream icing to ice the cake before I took it to class.
I used 2 batches of icing to do the general icing layer. Two. Batches. Each batch has 1 cup of fat (shortening, butter, or a combination of the two) and 1 pound of confectioners’ sugar. It’s approximately 3 cups. So, even without any decorations, the thing had 2 pounds of sugar on it or 6 cups of icing. :o I managed to get a pretty thick layer of icing in-between the layers, too, thanks so piping it out via a disposable decorating bag.
For the rose, I chose to do icing that only had shortening in it for fat and butter flavor to, well, add butter flavor. Previously, I’d used half shortening and half butter, which causes some consistency issues since butter will soften up much more than shortening at room temperature. I’d had problems with icing consistency throughout the class and I still had them. This time? My icing was too stiff! You’re supposed to have stiff consistency icing for the rose but this was too stiff. But, I forged on and made some not too shabby roses. Although, since the edges weren’t smooth, I suppose they look a little more like carnations. ;)
I also put some leaves in and man…I hated leaves before and I still hate them. They will not, for the life of me, have a nice tip and half the time they split as I’m piping them out. Boo!
But, now I have a fully decorated cake. Since I used only shortening in the last batch of icing, the icing was very white. So, I put a shell border on the cake and it contrasts pretty nicely with the cream color of the original layer, which has butter on it. You can also see some of the butter has seeped into the cake circle I used. ;)
