Piece of Cake (Course 1)

I signed up for a cake decorating course at Michael's. The teacher knows her stuff which I appreciate. But she is, however, a little unimaginative, and sticks to the "rules." For instance, according to her, the top border of the cake and the bottom border must always match in color. Uhhhhh, okay. Not true but I'll do it to keep her happy. It's kind of funny actually. I guess I'll be artistic, imaginative, and creative on my own time. I'll learn the rules so I can break them later. Wink. Wink. So that said, ALL designs are by dictate of the class. Cake 1: Moist, three egg cake with sweet cherry pie filling in the center. Below is the first cake I have EVER decorated. (I know, I was shocked when I realized it.) I was confused about what we were going to do, so my colors are all wrong, the balloons look like grass and well . . . yeah. I know how to spell ugly.

How to "help" your husband help eat all that cake: Cut a huge slab, and he'll eat what's on his plate. (Tricky.) Then make sure to eat cake for breakfast, lunch and dessert. But three cakes in two weeks is still too much to cram down. Enter Adam's coworkers. Problem solved, happy coworkers, major points for Adam. Everybody wins.

Cake 2: Lemon sponge cake with tart lemon glaze center. Although the clown theme was forced upon the class, I think this cake turned out pretty cute.

Cake 3: Pumpkin chocodot cake with Dad's chocolate sauce in the center with a chocolate ganache glaze outside. The ganache was a complete experiment for me. Chocolate goo went everywhere and the cake ended up looking like a giant hamburger patty with a muffin top—the center started to squish out. Lovely. But, it tasted good. I hope our middles don't start looking like this when I'm done with all the classes.

Four classes, three cakes, and ten days later you should see my kitchen, it is an explosion of stickiness, but it smells heavenly. Course 2 begins next month. . . .