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17 March 2004 - Let Me Sell Cakes! I had my very last cake decorating class (at George Brown College) on Monday night. I'm really quite happy that I decided to take that class -- it was originally a toss up between taking a cooking or baking class and the cake decorating. I actually chose the cake decorating because it was less expensive and at the time that was a big consideration. Later, when I looked at the course description of the baking class I realized that I can pretty much do everything that they are teaching there -- I would like to learn pastry tips and tricks though...I'm thinking of venturing into the "pastry realm" soon, so that would have helped a bit. But, keep your eyes open for pastries and cream puffs and napoleons in the near future...my poor poor waistline. For our final class we had to bake a cake (or buy one, as most people did) to bring to class so that we could assemble and decorate it. Our teacher was really great and spent the evening wandering around the class, pointing out problems we were having as well as commending us on how far we had come over the past ten weeks. She helped me with my leaves and I think I've finally got them down a bit better than before (not that you can tell from the leaves I put on this last cake...ugh) and she really liked my final cake. She even asked me if I would like to be a "helper" for her when she teaches a modeling class in September (chocolate modeling, not cat walk modeling, don't worry), which means you get to take the class for free. Yay! For this class on Monday I baked a Marble Pound Cake that I found on the Martha Stewart web site (yay, Martha!) a while ago. My mom has made it a few times and it is really delicious; instead of baking it in a loaf pan I baked it in a nine-inch spring form pan. It was a little "short" to make a three-layer cake but my teacher managed to snag a layer from someone with an extra chocolate cake that they had bought at a grocery store. It turned out pretty nicely (although I wasn't all that pleased with the decorating -- I made the stems/vines too thick for the flowers) and I took it to work yesterday to share with my co-workers. I received so many compliments on it and even a few requests to bake cakes for people's parties in the future. I think I'm gong to have to make an off-shoot of this web site that is just for cakes and desserts...perhaps I can make a little business of it! |