How was your weekend? Mine was quite busy - I need another weekend to recover from this one. Last night, I went to see the fourth most popular folk group in New Zealand, Flight of the Conchords. Many of you will be acquainted with them through their BBC radio series or their HBO TV show. The Conchords are just as hilarious live, and showed their ad lib prowess on stage in response to audience heckling. My favourite response was when someone asked them to perform a song that was not on the program - quick as a flash, Jemaine drawled back, "We're not very good at that one." It was a great show, with Arj Barker supporting the Conchords. The grand finale was Sugalumps - and once again demonstrated why you should never sit in the front row at a comedy show.
On Saturday, I did yet another cake decorating course. This was not planned - I got a call on Friday asking would I like to do Whimsical Cakehouse's Foundation I Cake Decorating class (1 tier round cake) the next day, as they had a vacancy. On the spot, I said yes, though I should be a little more cautious before opening my mouth - I realised that I had just committed my entire Saturday, as the class runs from 10am to 5pm.
It was definitely a terrific class, and I learned a lot. I may not have executed everything perfectly, but that's the point, I think - so that I can have a go and learn from my mistakes. We decorated a chocolate mud cake, cut it into three layers, filled the layers with ganache, ganached the outisde of the cake, then iced it in fondant, placed it on a board we'd covered in fondant, then decorated the cake with sugar flowers that we had made out of coloured fondant.
Here is the cake all ganached and ready for its fondant coat - the smooth sides are a revelation (just don't look too closely at the top!):
And here is another view of the finished cake:
I rolled my fondant too thin so I have a couple of imperfections in the icing, but no matter - I am very happy with the end product.
Our teacher, Mignon, was excellent, and showed us how to rescue our mistakes.
And here is the happy class at the end with our creations:
I would definitely recommend this course to anyone who has a passion for cake decorating.
