BUG CAKE

Julina who sits beside me in cake class is a young & inspiring perfectionist. This is great for me because I tend to rush through projects and need someone like her to slow me down. She cares about the decorating as my instructor calls it, she is passionate. She may bake her cake from a box recipe and use Betty Crocker icing but her cakes are a lovely golden brown and her icing is perfect. I'm not sure what is on Julina's cake. Although she did tell me it's name, I only remember that it's a supernatural tree building character- I thought it was a Pokemon! 

And then there is me.... yesterday I made four Nigella cakes-four because the first two were not what I had envisioned. I am also a perfectionist, but sadly only in my mind. *laugh* I'm hard on myself.. too hard-I over think things. I made the biggest batch of icing, exactly the kind the teacher recommended, not lovely tasty yummy butter cream, but perfect consistency sugar icing. I need all the help I can get.

In today's class we iced our cakes, let the icing harden and then piping gel pattern transferred an image onto them. I printed off a bug image for my little bug. I torted my cake  with the leveler filled the center with whip cream and bananas and used a spatula vise the cake icer tip to ice the top. I traced the bug onto wax paper and using the piping gel pattern transfer technique, transferred the image to the cake feathering it lightly with a decorator brush. Then I filled in part of the bug with my two icings and made some simple embellishments around the top and bottom of the cake. 

It has to be mentioned that the thirteen year old across the table from us wants to be a pastry chef and I can see why; her cake was beautifully iced. The instructor mentioned that young girls have nothing holding them back and just go for it. They are not worried about messing it up and want to have fun, and her cake was   exactly that, uninhibited perfection! 

A few friends told me last week that this class was about decorating not baking. I really need to focus on that for my next class. I can learn how to make a perfect non box cake another time but right now I'm there to do the fun part! Next weekend I'm going to be 13 again! Yikes...  

Husband is sitting beside me in bed enjoying his first piece of bug cake. I got an Mmmmm!  I won't be having any of the bug cake. Yesterday, I made a fresh strawberry, jam & whipped cream filled victoria sponge. It was delightful and so I've sworn off cake for a while. I hoping Steve takes the bug cake to work tomorrow...  

All in all not bad for my first bug cake!