Gâteau Michelle

So, this summer I have been teaching two gonna be 6th graders the fine are of cake decorating with the occasional baking lesson thrown in. These two girls are super awesome!!! They have some wonderful talent too. We started class with learning how to make icing- using the most basic recipe- the Wilton recipe. I personally use a different icing when I make cakes, but we were starting from the bginning and I wanted them to experience the subtleties of different icings to decide on their own what they like or dislike.  We began learning about pressure and star tips. I, myself, hate to do cakes covered in stars because they take so freaking long to do, but I also think that everyone should make at least one star cake so they know just how hard it is.  We started on cupcakes and make the cutest Whale cupcakes from “Hello Cupcake!” Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures of them. Take my word for it, they did a great job.

Next we set out to put together and decorate a cake. For this exercise, they had to bake their cakes at home and bring them in. They each baked 2 8-inch cakes of their own choosing and brought them to class the following week. They learned how to level the cake, make a dam, inset and smooth the filling even though all we used was icing, and then ice the cake. That took our whole 2 hours but they did better than some of students that I took class with! The following week, we started on the rainbow. Because we only had 2 hours at each session, we froze the cakes in between sessions. The rainbows came out beautifully and I could tell that they had been practicing their lettering.

The next week, we started our roses and other flowers. I also taught them how to bake a chocolate sponge cake. I pretty much just stood by and allowed the girls to follow the recipe. The cakes came out just right. We were having some trouble making our flowers come out looking as nice as the did in the book. There must be something that needs to tweaked with the Wilton recipe. It was okay though because I just wanted them to learn the motions . We put our cooled cakes on boards and wrapped them for the freezer.

We had decided to change our class structure a little bit and go for 4 hours once a week instead of 2 hours twice a week. It made a huge difference in what we could get done.

This last class, we made a different icing, one made with Brite White, and it made a huge difference. This is the icing I typically make for all of my cakes. It is light and fluffy and very easy to work with, yet it holds up well for decorating work. The girls thought it was fantastic. We also made royal icing inpreparation for the last cake we are making. In addition to those icings, we worked with Color Flow. I typically just thin out royal icing when I need the same effect, but the girls should know what is out there.  We made blue birds and a bird house for the last cake.

Then we got down to decorating our chocolate sponge cake. We were making a hydrangea cake that I had seen on the Whimsical Bakehouse site. She does some really creative items. I let the girls watch how she did it (she has a video) previously so they knew what it would look like and see her technique. In addition to decorating the cake, we also make chocolate leaves. Ours were free-form as I didn’t have any silicone or real leaves available. Their cakes came out fantastic!! I am so proud of them!!!