Flowers and Bow Cake

I took an advanced cake decorating class at the Viking School and learned how to decorate with fondant and gum paste. The class was a lot of fun and not intimidating at all! Here is what I made by the end of class:

When I walked into the Viking School in Garden City, I was sad to learn that they are closing their doors at the end of this month. Their cooking classes are always sold out, but despite their popularity this location is closing. If they offer this cake class at their other locations, I highly recommend taking it!

For this particular cake, I learned how to:

• properly level and apply icing to a cake
• roll and tint fondant
• cover a cake smoothly (and deal with my fear of cracks and dried fondant!)
• create a rope border
• design a bow using gum paste
• use brush stroke techniques and royal icing to paint flowers

The class also covered how to create a swiss dot pattern with royal icing. I partially followed the instructor’s directions:

Even though the instructor showed us how to make rose buds with icing and carnations out of fondant, I didn’t use it on my cake. Maybe next time. Not bad for my first try with fondant, no?