Adventures in Cake Decorating: Day 3 & Valentine's Challenge

Welcome back to another installment of Adventures in Cake Decorating. In case you missed the first two installments, let me catch you up. I'm trying to teach myself how to decorate cakes so I can make a beautiful cake for my sons 1st birthday in August. Here's some pictures of my work thus far:


Day 1

Day 2

By now you should surely know I'm a true beginner at this craft. So, now onto my third day of practice. I began with a batch of chocolate butter cream decided to focus on the particular skills I wanted to use on my Valentine's Day cake; the shell and  crown border. Here's how it went:

I'd say it went a lot better than last time, but there is still room for improvement. Isn't there always? As you can see, I also got a little crafty and spelled out the type of piping I did in frosting as well. Even when I'm writing in butter cream, my penmanship leaves more to be desired. ha ha 


Now onto the Valentine's Day challenge. I wanted to make a cake for my love using the skills I've been practicing for the past couple of weeks. This was the first time I've actually piped onto a cake, so I got a 'real' feeling of what it's like to decorate on a cake and not on wax paper. I made a butter cake with a chocolate ganache filling and then covered it in plain white butter cream. Once I was done with the basic coat of frosting, I separated the remaining frosting into 2 containers and added pink coloring to one of the half and left the other half white. I did a shell border around the bottom and then used a straight edge of a grater to mark lines on the top of the cake to use as a guide. It helped A LOT! I did the crown border last so it could cover up the ends of each of the lines. I had to stick the piping bag with pink frosting in the refrigerator for a few minutes so it could stiffen up a little. I learned it makes a really big difference in the quality of work you do when the icing is the correct consistency.


Here's the final product of all that hard work.

I have to say I'm pretty proud of this cake. It turned out a lot better than I expected, based on my previous piping experiments. I was so happy, that I actually did a little happy dance in my kitchen when I was done. My son who was watching me from the comfort of his high chair thought that was hilarious. My husband asked if I had bought the cake from the store. He's a sweetheart.


My next challenge will be an Easter challenge. Not sure if I should do cupcakes or a another cakes, what do you think?