Cake Making Breakthrough!

So when I came out here to live in Missouri, Alex told me I needed a good hobby that would keep me busy while Kyle's napping and I have nothing to do. I went through lots of options and thought about art. Painting, water colors, drawing, etc. I decided I wasn't too good at that so I decided to do sewing. Then I realized I didn't have a sewing machine and moved onto the next option. I went through so many ideas and threw so many out just because I really wasn't good at anything. Then I found a magazine or something that got me interested in cake decorating. I thought if I could get really good at this stuff, I could do something I loved and make money while doing it. It sounded like a great idea to me.

Well, I soon realized that cake decorating cost more money than I thought and took more time and effort and DISHES than I had originally thought. So for a while I only took the time to practice every once in a great while. I loved doing it while I was doing it, but it took time to find a good recipe for frosting that tasted good and was a good consistency to do the different things I had in mind. Needless to say, this was a hobby that took lots of practice. I didn't really know what I was getting into when I saw the idea in my head, in all it's beauty and glittering greatness!

My wonderful mother-in-law got me an amazing cake decorating kit for Christmas and I decided I couldn't wait to try it out. Only one thing. The whole time, effort and DISHES thing had not changed. Last night I was looking through a book I got with the kit, eyes googling over the beautiful and majestic cakes that someone else had done, when I realized that if I did indeed really want to acheive something like that I would really have to put all my effort into such a hobby and DO IT! I needed to make mistakes and write down the successes. I needed to not be afraid of failing at a whole cake or making something ugly because it would all add to the amazing cake decorator that I hope to someday be.

So I made a resolve today that I would try new things. I would add to my old recipes and write down things that worked out and why I liked the outcome. I would take lots of time to check and recheck consistencies. So basically that's what I started doing. I am a long way from knowing what I'm doing, but I have a few more ideas and I'm happy with them. :)

This is how my roses used to look. They look fine right? Nothing wrong with these ones. But if you were to put them on a cake, it takes a long time for them to dry. These roses are made of buttercream icing. They taste better, look fine, easily made, but they wouldn't dry very fast, so in the case that I have to make a lot of roses and I'm short on time, I would need a different type of icing so they would dry faster.

Today I realized that Royal Icing does a lot of things. It has a nice smooth texture that makes making roses and other flowers SO easy. It dries super fast (I know because I actually cut myself on some while trying to scrape some out of the bowl.) and they make beautiful petals with minimal air bubbles. The other thing I love about these is that there is no butter so the icing is a perfect WHITE! It is so hard to make icing that tastes good, is perfectly white, and makes a good decorating consistency. I have found that this icing is just the icing I was looking for!

So I realize that Wilton's company has had these recipes out all along for all different types of frostings and icings, and they have loads of tips for what to use for which thing, but I guess I was always to lazy to try them out or figure out what the best one was for myself. But mainly this post is the first of a long line of trial and error posts so that I can keep track of things that work and don't work. Hopefully it helps in my endeavors to get better all the time.