Project #3 completed! I am happy with this one..

White on white is so hard to see... BUT, here you are. My completed wedding cake with heart toppers and all :).  We HAD to put a pastillage top, so I cut out some cute heart shapes, molded them with a leaf  texture and then placed them gently on top. :) Do you likey?? Tell me what you do and do not likey! I am all about the feedback.

I really enjoyed making this cake, even though I was frustrated from time to time.  It had its challenges but all in all it was worth it. Time consuming and all. :) I looked forward to class every day, so that's a good thing!Lemme see if I can get you a better picture...

This one had a little flash.. Anywho.. you get the point ;)  I get graded on it tomorrow so I will let you know what we get!  As I mentioned earlier, the Chef is very helpful when you ask for something, he just isn't the most informative or encouraging while you work.  I don't know about you, but I need feedback!  :)  I really want to know if something looks good or if something looks bad. But then, EVERYONE has a different opinion so its so hard. :( You really just have to go with your gut feeling. I don't have a problem in that department!

We are going to start our sculpting cakes next week. I am excited because we are FINALLY going to use real cakes instead of foam! Yes! Yes! Yes! :)  We get to EAT something! laughing....its all about the sweet tooth my darlings!  We have a choice of making a sculpted purse cake or a sculpted topsy turvy cake.  I want to choose the topsy turvy cake because I know that it's in high demand these days.  But, I am wondering if I should make the purse cake so I can learn a skill or two about sculpting the cake into a different shape other than just slants ?!!? Hmmmm .  I am not sure! But maybe you guys can let me know what you think!

Not that one is "easier" than the other, but I don't like to choose what is easiest because I don't feel I can practice any skill in doing that. If it is a little more complex and time consuming, then I am more interested... still can not decide. :(  Although I want to do the topsy turvey cake, I have a feeling that making a purse cake would be the better bet. Ahhh I will figure it all out tomorrow.

I hope you have a nice evening.. I am a bit tired and am going to get some rest and maybe read a book... I am making Niel and Noemi a yellow cake with chocolate frosting and marshmallow fondant to top it off :)

You guys have a great night! Thanks for going through the day to day process with me!!

XOXO



Day 4 of my Wedding Leaves cake :)

We are getting there. :) Its Wednesday, or "Wedding day" as my dad likes to put on my emails :)   It has been a productive day. I woke up early, went to the dentist..got a weird cleaning by people who were trying to sell me everything under the sun.  But it's done and its one more thing off of my "to do" list! Oh, I'm back to reading again too!  I am REALLY happy about that, now I just have to find another good book to read!  

Ok, so back to the cake decorating.  I found out today that I do not enjoy piping. I have never done it before and you would think its mega simple, but it is not.  At least for me it is not.  But, I got it done and I will practice this because I want to be able to do it with effortless ease.   Practice makes perfect, right?  Its a shame the Chef didn't allow us to do any practicing prior to making this cake! ha.. but its ok. As long as he doesn't try to say anything to me about my vines when grading time comes around :) :).

The vines are on my second tier.  I finished it by the first half of class. I piped the vines onto the cake.. messed up, cleaned it up, piped it out again and again. :)  I then cut out and molded each little leaf and placed them on the vines.  At first, I thought I would do vines sparingly with a lot of space in between each, but then I thought that I would fill the tier completely for a much fuller look.  I am pretty happy with it.  My sketch shows them sparingly but I think this look matches the bottom tier a little more. For this cake, less is not more.

For the third tier, I decided to go with my original idea of the fondant strip with the molded leaves pressed into it. I loved this idea but I was hesitant it would not be enough... It is enough! :)  I attempted to put the flowing leaves, similar to the leaves on the first tier, on the top, but then it ended up looking like a crown... and ehhhh I don't do crowns.So down it went.

Tomorrow is touch up day. I will place the borders on the two tiers. I will place the pastillage wedding banners on top. I created a few ideas for the top. I have some leaves cut out, I have some upside down hearts with leaf print outs on them and I have dove's.  Each fits in perfectly with the theme. I am leaning towards the upside down hearts with the leaf print outs on them. We shall see!!  Friday is the day we turn them in.  If I get done early, we all know what I am doing... yup! PIPING!!

I hope you have a beautiful evening... Will see you back here tomorrow!

Bye Bye

Wedding tier one completed... 2 more to go!

Dear Rhett, I am hurt that you secretly envy me and my cake ;) ;) and said.. " I hate you and your cake Linda.. I hope it flies away" .. laughing!! That was hilarious!! It made for a great start of the day!  :) Rhett, of course, was just messing with me. :) :)  There's nothing but camaraderie in our class and everyone is great to be around. We've been through 5 classes together, so we have the kinship thing going on ;).  Any-who, it was a great way to start 4 hours of leaf making, molding, pasting and shaping :) :)

I now know why wedding cakes can start at $500.00. Soo worth it. I'm really proud of this cake and I am not even going to b*** about only finishing the first tier, 3 days later. :)  I also wont lie and tell you that I don't see its imperfections. Uuuggg it tugs at my heart. I am not putting 100% into this, which is NOT good, I know I should. I am putting in about 85%.  :( Isn't it bad that I admit it?   I want to put 100%... ok, fine, no I don't, or else I would... :(  As someone told me the other day, " I don't know why, I just did it".  I guess I will use the same answer when you guys eventually ask me why. I will say to you:  I just don't know why, but I'm only giving it 85%.  

So yea, back to the imperfections.  Some of the leaves are not facing the correct way.. they hang left and not right.. yes, I am still talking about LEAVES people!! Seriously now... ;)  The space in between the leaves is a little off.. I am not happy about that. There should be no gaps, but there are.. I see them. :(  Its also my first wedding cake, so I am learning that in order to "glue" with vodka, that I cant let the liquid run because it turns my leaf shiny. I don't want shiny. I want matte...and white..and elegant and dainty!!  I am learning that fluorescent lighting is turning my white cake, beige.  Whats up with that?!?!?  Whatever, there you have my personal criticisms!  They are constructive though!!  I mean, the leaves could have been placed better, they also could have been put to dry differently for a different look and feel.. blah, blah, blah...

I took a walk, that's what I did... and then looked back to wave goodbye to the cake so I could take a breather...

Laughing.. yup, that's me stalking my own cake.. sneaky huh?   And look at Donna making EVERY attempt not to be in the picture :) That is Andrea to the left, working her purple fondant. She is making a sexy wedding cake.. Lulu in the back right totally focusing on the borders of her cake that are coming out amazing...and Rhett behind Lulu.. we don't care what Rhett is doing. We don't even look at Rhett! laughing.. Im just kidding, he has a Safari theme that I love!!  Heather is behind Donna, you can't really see her, but she is also at our table and she is re-creating her wedding cake, super sweet and fun!  And Melissa, who has her back to the camera, is always sooo meticulous and quiet while she works.. I feel bad sometimes cuz all I do is yap and yap and yap.. Woops... silence is golden right? Dang!! I have to remember that! :)

Tomorrow I start on tier #2! I will pipe out the vines and then cut and mold and paste the smaller leaves to it. I am going to try to give it 100% but then I feel like if I give it 100% and it doesn't come out NEAR perfect, that ... well, you already know. Sad face... :(  I will just do it!! And if I give it a hundred and it comes out crappy, then so be it!

I am still up in the air with the third tier.  I do believe I am going to do a bit of both instead of just one or the other.  I can do that ya know, I am its creator!! Wow, I am a CREATOR!!! That is soo cool!!  I didn't have to have labor pains! OR nausea!! Love it!!

Ok, insanity takes over and I am out of here.  I hope you have a beautiful evening.

Ta Ta for now...

Wedding Leaves as a Wedding Theme.....

Happy Monday!! It really is a great one... I've been laughing since I got home. Remember what I said I learned last week??.. LAUGH AT YOURSELF?!?!  Yea, totally doing that!  I got home after 4pm today which I was NOT happy about! I tell ya, time is flying so I try to hold on to every second of my life that I can! And when its wasted, its not cute!  But here I am.. laughing and ready to clue you in on my Wedding Cake theme. :)

But first I would like to share with you that I had a very busy weekend. I had the  honor of creating two cakes for two very special girls; my sister and my niece. They both had a birthday and I put my new skills to the test by creating fondant cakes for them. I think for my first two cakes, they were ok. I am my own worst critic, I know.. :)  But they both looked great and tasted delicious, so not too shabby. I enjoyed creating them and I enjoyed the feedback very much. 

Lets hop over to the wedding cake project.  The picture above shows ya where I left off today. I started working on this bad boy on Friday. I got the idea from looking at a bunch of pics a friend printed out.  I then took the idea, changed it up a bit, and made it my own.  The original picture shows the bottom 10" cake filled with feathers..the second tier with diamond piping work and two lovebirds on the top made out of pastillage... I don't do the whole diamond piping thing as I think its overly done and I will not put two people smooching on the top of my cake either.  I prefer to do something slightly different and maybe a little more unique. I chose to do 3 tiers instead of 2.  I want to do the 2nd tier with vines and leaves piped out, and the top third layer with leaves facing the opposite direction of the leaves on the bottom tier.  I placed a few on the picture above just to get the feel for it and I kinda like it... BUT, time will tell what ends up being the final product as I constantly change as I go. 

I was beyond annoyed on Friday covering the 10" Styrofoam. I had to roll the fondant out THREE times to get it to finally be what it was supposed to be!!! Round instead of Square!! Seriously now, its 36 oz of fondant that you have to kneed and then roll out and roll out and roll out... my poor arms, I thought I had upper arm strength.. consider that NEGATORY!! :)  Everyone saw a different side of Linda last Friday, a very frustrated and annoyed one!   Sorry Donna! Sorry Rhett!  I saw you looking at me like I was a tiny bit Ca-razy! And I was!!  :) :) But, I have to make my own mistakes so that I can learn from them. Here is the little devil exactly as I wanted it:

I want these bad boys to be perfectly smooth and cut and I want them not too thin, just thick enough. That's what I got above.  I do not like bumps, I do not like mis-cuts, I don't like anything less than almost perfect ;)  Nothing is perfect, I know.

I created the flowers as well.. or at least I started to!  I ended up taking the Gum Paste home and creating more flowers over the weekend so that I could get some progress done today! And as you can see, I did. Herer are the up close pics of the flowers.  These are made out of gum paste.

The leaves were created by using a leaf cutter that Donna was so kind to lend me.  Thank you doll!!  She also lent me her leaf mold so I was able to cut each flower, mold it and then set it on an egg carton so that I could get a little 3-D look from them... I am using this look only for the bottom tier.  Here is another picture so you dont need to scroll up:

You can see it looks like it is flowing.  I then created 30 more leaves for the second row, to lay flat... and now need to create another 70 or so,  so that I can finish up the two additional rows.  I had another idea for the 3rd tier, and it was to use a leaf mold instead of the inverted leaves  you see here in the above picture...

Lemme know what ya think... I  could do this.. or I could do the inverted leaves. You will have to picture the 2nd tier with the vines and leaves flowing on it though.. cuz I have not gotten there and I don't think I will be there until Wednesday. :( Please Lord.. let me be there on Wednesday.. I still will have to pipe borders, create the wedding banner and do last minute touch ups...

You will all be happy to know that I actually LOVE this cake that I am making. I am a sucker for nature.. so I wanted my theme to be trees, ocean, vines or branches.. but everyone keeps doing those so I just cant do it!! I wanted to do something different along the same lines, yet classy but lovely.. and I think I got it and I really can not wait to finish this one.

I find peace in making each leaf.. imprinting each one.. folding the fondant onto the cake, creating it. I just wish I had a little more creativity to work with, BUT as I found out, all I have to do is search through pictures, see other people's ideas and then eventually tweak and come up with my own. If it would come to me naturally I would be happier, but WHATEVER!! As I am slowly learning the hard way, you don't always get what you want.

So, on that beautiful note, I am out of here! I have some leaves to make, a work out to do because I am going to get chunky monkey after eating all of the left over fondant. I love that stuff. Its sooo bad, I know.. but what the alternative?  An apple, I know.. . I know... not happening! haha...

Ok, well besides the fact that the Chef never talks to me, never mentions a word about my cakes or looks my way, I think I am doing ok.  He does pay attention when I ask him multiple questions though! That has to count for something!  :) :) 

I'm off and wishing you a beautiful rest of the day...

Cake completeion #2

Good evening hot people!

How was your day?!?! I hope exciting in some kind of way.  :) After all, what is a day if its just dull or the same, ya know?  I had a quiet morning and then whisked off to class happy to have had the extra time to finish my cake.  The stones I created came out looking really great and it made a big difference after I placed them as the border of the cake.  We didn't do anything special today, other than look up possible ideas for our 2 to 3 tier wedding cakes that will be due next Friday.  I have to do some real research!!  But I am excited to do it.

Now that cake number 2 is completed, its on showcase :) . This is the front of the cake.  If you will remember, I wanted to create my Tuscan photo but I didn't quite have the time to do it so I rolled with the idea and created this:

I added a bit more greenery to the cake as well.  I put some leaves coming out of the window pane and also added a few flowers to the stones along with more leaves...  Just little touches here and there.  I took a picture of the back of the cake although its not really something you see, but to me, I think a cake has to be done completely, all the way around:

You can get a better look at the stones here...

Definitely let me know what you think.  I need the constructive criticism. :) Below are a few of the pics that were done in class so you can see the beautiful ideas my classmates came up with. 

I think all of them came out great! It's cool to see the creativity. Not one cake was the same.

Off to cake #3 we go!!  I have a few ideas that I am entertaining for the wedding cake. One of them is very smooth and elegant using warm earth tone colors... the other is a fun idea.. moon and stars and a cloud draping the cake all the way down.... not sure! Totally up in the air. I tried to sketch them out but lets just say sketching isn't my forte  ;)

I hope you guys have a great night.  I can not believe tomorrow is Friday already! Sheesh...

I'm off to grab a Martini with the sister to bring in her birthday!! See you here next week when I have something to show ya!

Have a beautiful weekend!

XO

My 8" Fondant cake with a touch of Tuscany

Happy Wednesday to you! Although its actually Thursday right now. I was watching the Venezuelan soccer game and so this is coming to you kinda late. Sowy!!

Sooo,  these were the flowers that I created yesterday. They don't look great in this picture because the pearl dust isn't coming out cute. ;)  But I made as many as I could.   I had to rush which wasn't fun, but if I didn't get them semi done they wouldn't have been able to go on the cake. They require a lot of time to dry, which I did not have. :(  I wish I would have had more time so that I could create, let dry, continue to build onto the flower, let dry, etc... but I had to do them all in one shot, so sorry!

I got into class today early, created new flowers, finished up the other ones I was working on which had a 3-D look to it. I painted my Tuscan Window and shutters as well as my pot.. but that kind ended in tragedy. :(  You cant win them all when you have a little spot to work on and so many pieces to your puzzle all around ya, it's inevitable! Flowers broke, pots broke.. you name it, it happened to me! Love it!!

We learned how to put the fondant onto the cakes as soon as we started class. That was a good demo to see. It is actually easier to do than it looks!  Once you roll out the fondant, you will then place it on your cake and pull it out and press down.  You will have a bit extra which you will cut off and set to the side. You can re-use the fondant for decorating purposes.

You want to leave a little room for error so leave half an inch or so extra until you completely press and smooth out your cake.

To get rid of that extra fondant after completely smoothing out your top and sides, place it on your turn table and then take the extra off with a knife or exacto blade, as the chef is doing here. You can see the extra fondant he cuts off dangling from the sides.

At this point you are ready to start decorating your cake. :)  I finally got done with my flowers with 40 minutes left before the cake was due.  I wanted to do an ivory color for the fondant but ended up going with pink. :) Shocking, I know.. but pink is always a great color. :)  My flower pot broke so I didn't have a place to put the flowers, which meant I had to come up with a new theme, yet again!!  But here you are.. no more complaining.... Ready?!!? Uuuggghhh of course I am not loving it, I am my worst critic. My vision was something WAY different, but here is what I will be putting out for a grade:

Ok, go ahead!! Give me your opinions! I can take it... I still have some work to do here. I have to dust some of the petals, I need to add a stone border on the bottom of the cake, to give a little character to the window and give it more of a natural look. I still need to add some leaves to the small flowers, etc. etc.  I will update this picture tomorrow when I turn in my finished product, as he gave us a bit of time tomorrow morning to wrap it up, turn them in and start on our piping skills for our Wedding Cake project! I need all the extra time I can get! Just to make it a LITTLE better....

Thanks for being here with me!! I love all your feedback and appreciate you keeping up with my progress.

Good night and see you back here tomorrow! Thursday already! My goodness does time fly by.

XO

Let's start making flowers

No, seriously...can we PLEASE start making some flowers???.. 3 days of lecture and showing us technique and this is what I came up with... really Linda??   Um, I didn't put much effort into this little guy. It's about the fakest flower I have ever seen in my life! haha... Oh man. I did learn something this weekend though.. LAUGH AT YOURSELF! It sure beats every other alternative. So I am laughing. :) :)

Apparently our 8" fondant cakes are due tomorrow and we have to showcase the flowers we have learned. :) Any one with me here? Is anyone as lost as I am?? I thought we were practicing?? Ohh boy!  I JUST started to make buds and mini flowers for the cake, so how in heaven's name am I supposed to have a completed cake for tomorrow??  My Italian theme is sooo out the window. There is no way in the world I will have it done tomorrow which means I wont really be able to show off any skill!  More laughing!! Whooo Hooo!!  Fact:  I have not practiced making a rose, or a lily,  or a Tulip..nada! I have not practiced anything other than dummy up there in the picture! Its meant to be a "daisy"  by the way, if anyone was wondering. :) I guess I am going to have to use that one on the cake! Classic!

Ok, so now you can see a little of my frustration.  I am going to have to change up my design again and make it slightly more simplistic in nature and leave all this creativity I had for another day.  Here is what I was ORIGINALLY going to create:

This picture has a story. It was taken on my drive through Tuscany in 2004. I love love love Italy. It is absolutely my most favorite place in the world!! Nothing tops the experiences I have had in that country. I'm due back there and very soon! It's been 7 years too long!

Anyhow,  I was obviously going to have to leave out a bunch of the flowers, but I was STILL going to make it happen.  Now, I have to change this up and create something my 2 year old niece could probably make.. Grrr.. me not very happy!  It's not like I don't enjoy making the flowers. A lot of people in the class cant stand it and they cant wait to move on. I don't mind it one bit. I stay busy and I actually enjoy the process. I wish I could practice more in class where I have all the tools, but 4 hours go by really quickly.

I will take pictures tomorrow of what I end up creating. Cross those fingers and pray for me! I need all the love I can get!

Have a great night and see you here tomorrow.

Ta Ta for now...

You have to speak up....

Happy Friday to everyone. I didn't blog yesterday because we didn't create anything, again!! 

Yes, this would be day 2 of no technique. I found this to be VERY odd because Chef Ralph is an excellent chef. So... I spoke up. I grabbed the Syllabus, took a look at it, marked off all the techniques we were supposed to have been learning by this point and just simply asked him the question. " Will we be learning how to create these borders and flowers and designs?".  He said yes, but that he thought we had already learned all these basics in our BASIC TECHNIQUES class. Which is mega valid! Basic designs... basic technique class?!?!? Anyone?  Yea, that would be a negative. We didn't learn it. Soooo, he said he would change our syllabus up and show us how to do all of these things. Yeay!! Please, please, please lets get some hands on learning . Thus far we are all using our own creativity to make these cakes, which is awesome in itself to know the creative side is there on its own, but how much better would it all be if we actually had some skill! ;) Dont get me wrong, he does show us how to create the pastes and product and does show us how to cover the cakes and the details are awesome.. I think we are all just yearning to learn how to create designs!  After all, thats what makes the difference. But a cake that isnt covered correctly would be tragic, so enough of my bitching. We HAVE learned how to do that thus far. :)  And quite nicely too....

We did learn how to create the gum paste yesterday for the flowers we are going to learn how to make.....except we ran out of gum trag before it got to Andrea and I. Now, now.. pick that jaw up from the ground. I know its shocking that there were not enough ingredients provided to the chef to create something that we would literally be making EVERY day for a week.. ;) Ahhh Le Cordon Bleu staff and President... its so hard to have pride. The only thing  I could sell a person on, to come enroll at this school, would be telling them that the Chef's are excellent. It really is not their fault. I  know they are equally as frustrated as we are because I SEE it with my own eyes. Yet, here is a case, where even if you speak up, it makes absolutely no difference.  LOVE IT! Literally, my classmates have walked into the Presidents office, the student services offices and the administration offices and the results have been less than satisfying.

Ok, on to some positivity... today we should be creating flowers from gum paste. Cross those fingers and toes that we do so I can have something to show ya! Its going to be an amazing day regardless.

Have a beautiful, positive and fun day!  For those special people that are flying today... safe travels! Wish I was flying somewhere tooooooo.

4 hours of royal icing and we walked away with one technique....

Hello Hello...

Well, it was a full on lecture day... I looked at my notes for tips, but it seems there wasn't too much that I wrote down.  We learned that Royal Icing needs to be made to create the lovely flowers and decor that go on wedding cakes.  Love that info, for sure, but would have LOVED to have made some flowers today! I really want to know how to create all the different types. :( We did get a chance to look at a bunch of magazines and go to the library for a bit of research... but eeehhhh ... I just need more interaction. I hope that we start to learn the designs VERY soon!

As you can see from the picture above, we did learn how to make the cake stand out of pastillage! That is me inspecting it because I didn't believe that the little box would hold two filled cakes. ;) Lulu took the picture so you guys could see what goes on in my little mind while in class :)

Our next project is an 8" fondant cake. We need to come up with a theme for it. It is not a wedding theme, that I know of, so I am still in the process of figuring this little one out!  Definitely throw out some ideas, I appreciate them all!

I did go to a cake decorating club though which I hope makes up for some of the things we are not learning in class. My buddies that are in this particular Chefs class mentioned that she has showed them how to make so many different things that they have trouble keeping up! I want that problem! haha... ok, enough from me.

Have a great night and see you here when I have something GREAT to showcase.

Night!

To BEE or not to BEE :) :) My chocolate molded cake....

Happy Tuesday everyone!  So I finally finished my chocolate molded cake today. I didn't have too many details to finish up, but as half my table mates will tell ya, I have perfection issues. :( I just kept at it, making minor changes here and there ;). 

We painted our pastillage banners today as well. I chose a flower shaped banner and painted the backdrop with light brown chocolate and then wrote "To Bee .. or not To Bee...." in dark chocolate. :) I thought it was catchy! ha... cute? Ah..whatever.. When I finished, the cake looked matted like this:

The picture on the top is sprayed to give the chocolate a nice and shiny look. :) Of course I wanted to get my hand on that can and spray spray away! Yes, like the torch for the Creme Brulee's. :) :) BUT, that was not the case. Bummer! The Chef had full control. I mean really?? Its just a little spray... why couldn't he hand it over?? Booo....

Its cool though, cuz I really like Chef Ralph. He is super laid back, helpful and understanding but definitely not a push over and I am glad to see it. He likes his kitchen clean too! I can appreciate that. ;)  Tomorrow we will go over each of our cakes and hopefully receive our grades. I will tell you how that went!  In the meantime, I promised you some pics from my classmates and I will put up those of people I am close with just in case someone I don't know has a problem with their cake being on the site...

This is Andrea's cake. She did a Magician Theme:

This is LuLu's theme, she did an archaeological dinosaur theme:

This is Heather's theme, she did the Lilo and Stitch theme ( I hope I spelled that right )

And this is Jenna's Hello Kitty theme:

Everyone had really great ideas. I am a little disappointed that we have not been taught how to create anything other than a rose ( of which no one used) along with how to paint onto the pastillage. I am hoping all this changes and that we do learn some cool designs.  I think the wedding cake is our next project, but I am not sure. I will let you guys know soon though! Hope you enjoy the pictures.

Have a great night everyone! I am off to look up a word in the dictionary!!

Ta Ta for  now...



Cake Decorating has begun. Project #1 - Chocolate molding

Hi guys!

I am sorry that I have not blogged since the start of the class. This blog is going to be a little more sporadic than last time as things run a little slower in cake decorating class! The first day of class was a riot :) We were all standing outside the assigned classroom and our Chef was sitting inside his assigned classroom... yea, you guessed it!... we were in different buildings! ;) GOOO Le Cordon Bleu!! Wooo Hooo!!  :)

We finally made it into class and we got out 40 minutes later because the computer system was down and the Chef couldn't get prepared.  Day one served as an introduction and we were told we would be doing 5 projects in our 6 weeks with him.  The first of those projects being a chocolate molded cake.  :) Ahh chocolate, how I love thee. :) :)  I had no issue with this whatsoever. :)  We had to make our own chocolate moldings instead of using the store bought ones, so we each made a white chocolate batch and a dark chocolate batch.  I of course was the taster.. What?? I had to make sure they were not disastrous, you know. ;)

We ran out of dark chocolate though, ( SHOCKER!) and so Andrea and I made milk chocolate molding instead.  We were then told that our chocolate molding cake had to have a banner on it which had to be made out of pastillage... You guessed it, the next day we made pastillage! All these beauties are edible. They may not be the BEST tasting, but they are edible. I personally think they all taste delicious :). But then again, I love sugar.

So back to reality, everyone knows how I struggle with creativity.  To think that I have to come up with not one, but FIVE ideas?!?!? Ay yayay.... It made me put my thinking cap on.  :) I have been feeling a little gloomy lately so my initial theme for the chocolate molding was rain and a big umbrella... Don't ya know it, that day when I came out of class, the skies turned gray and it was rain and thunder all the way home.  Was it a sign?  Not sure.. but that night I sat on the couch talking to my niece and she was flipping through channels on the TV when she came across this super cute Bee movie! I LOVE BEE'S! And I totally save them every time I see them drowning in the ocean or pools or anywhere for that matter! The poor little guys are going to go extinct for heavens sake! I do my homework :).

So yea, I changed my gloomy rain theme to a Bee theme. :) You can see my creation above. I had the bee hive and the bee some what created by the end of the day.  I chose white chocolate as my base to be a little different than the rest since I knew most people would opt for the darker chocolate as the base.  We started to do  the actual work on our cake foams on day 3 of the class, which was last Thursday. I got pretty far considering I have never molded anything.. not even with play dough!  On Friday I got slightly further...and today I was just about done. A few more finishing touches to the bee's and the creatoin of my pastillage banner and I am ready to turn this baby in for grading.. ready to check it out?

This is the front of the cake.. although I have made changes.. my honey comb ended incorrectly so  I have now removed that retarded diamond you see in the front and have replaced it with a little bee. :)  You have to think quick and make corrections or else you get stuck! Or at least I do!  But I was proud of myself, I came up with that one pretty quickly.

You can barely see it in this picture, but the sides of the cake are the honey comb :) . I promise to get you a better picture tomorrow and also show you the creations of some of my class mates.  If I can not show you a picture, I will not blog. But I will have you up to speed on any tips that I think you may like.

In the meantime, this is what the cake is wrapped over... FOAM! :) 

Obviously this is for decorating purposes. :) I will find out for us tomorrow how the chocolate sticks to a  real cake although its more than likely with butter cream! :)

Good night everyone! Have a beautiful week.

XO