Baking Naked: Wayback Wednesday

I found some old photos of some very early cakes I made and I thought I'd share them, just to give you an idea of how far I've actually come with the decorating. I'll give them a plug since I learned so much, but if you want to try this, take the Wilton's classes. They're cheap, the instructors are good, at least mine was. She was awesome, had been teaching for like 20 years, had been through the Wilton master course, and had a pin for teaching over 1,000 students. Her name is apparently on the wall at the Wilton offices. Wilton has a tendency to have some pretty tacky decorations. Remember the Scary Ass Clown Heads? But they revamped all the classes right after I took them so they focus a lot more on fondant and are more modern now.

This cake was my first try at covering a cake in fondant. It was a miserable failure. And my miserable, I mean BBBBBBBBAAAAAAAAADDDDDDDDD. It was for my friend Karen's birthday and I wanted to suprise her with a cake. And I got it into my head it was time to try fondant and I was going to make it myself by doing a marshmallow fondant. Now if you've never actually used fondant before, FOR FSM'S SAKE BUY IT!!! Wilton's gets a pretty bad rap, but it's cheap with your 40% off coupon for Michael's or JoAnn's and it's super easy to work with. I use Satin Ice when I need black, but it's soft and harder to use. And I can't seem to avoid the dreaded elephant skin with it to save my life.

Oh wait, you were waiting for the horrible cake photos right? Okay here it is:

I was feeling pretty confident when I made the fondant. See how pretty it looks? You see, Karen has a thing for fluorescent colors. Mainly in her clothes. She's pretty infamous with her particular fashion style. (I say this with love Karen, but you know it too).

So here is the cake:

No wait, that was entirely too artistic a photo, let's try again:

Let this be a lesson to all of us about the need to smooth your buttercream, level your cake, and ease it up with the powdered sugar. But the good news is that I apparently was aware of the need for a buttercream dam with the filling!