Cakes and other things

Whoa, long time no write!
I shall try to catch up but get ready - it might be long.

Two weeks ago I started a cake decorating class. I'm sure you'll think "Weight Watchers and cake decorating? Are you SERIOUS?"
Well, I am. And it's great fun! It's only a four week course, making today week three but there's some follow up classes that I will sign up for so I'm really looking forward to that! As far as eating is concerned... after you've dealt with all that icing all the time, it makes you sick to your stomach so the temptation just isn't there. Perfect!

I suppose I should start with the basics... the first lesson was all about how to bake a cake (tips and tricks on how to make sure it browns evenly on all sides, how it doesn't stick and so on), then how to ice it and how to make your own butercream icing, and then some little demo of all the kinds of decorations we would be learning in class. So the first week we didn't do anything, just watched.

Last week we were supposed to bring in a cake (I did a white package cake and filled it with vanilla pudding and pineapple pieces - YUM!), ice it and then start practicing decorations. Of course the whole icing of the cake took a really long time so by the end of the lesson we had an iced cake but hadn't yet done any decorations on it (we had practiced stars and other stuff on our practice board though). So in a real hurry, we mixed some of the white icing with the colors we had bought the previous week and started decorating.
We learned how to do the famous "Wilton rose" but to be fair, I was so crap at it I left it and chose to decorate the cake without it. I am going to practice it and eventually get it, I just need more time.
So my idea for the cake was to honor my old company. And since I was going to bring the cake into work anyway (because I REFUSE to eat it myself!) it seemed like a cool idea. So I got started on mixing that orange that we have in our logo and I had planned on doing the black too but time ran out. To make a longer story much shorter, I ended up taking some icing home and decorating the rest of the cake at home. And here's how it turned out.




People really liked the taste of it and were very complimentary of the "design" lol. Needless to say, it made me feel so much better to put in "caking" what I keep saying - our good ole company was fantastic compared to crappy IBM.

This week we did some more practicing new things like shells and hearts and the cake I made this time is chocolate with vanilla pudding filling. I meant to color the icing brown, so you couldn't see the brown cake crumbs in the white icing but I forgot so if you look closely you'll see the brown specs in it. Good lesson learned here! LOL

So here's a pic of today's cake (the roses in the middle are courtesy of another woman in the class who did them for practice so I "adopted" them ;-)



Much more going on at the moment but I shall keep it short. Choir rehearsals are going great, I can't even tell you how much fun I'm having! I could literally do this everyday for hours on end. A lot like ice skating actually. That subject will get its own post later this week as there's lots to tell but I will spare you for now.

It snowed like crazy on Friday/Saturday - so much so in fact, that my car was half buried in snow. It was interesting and fun to try to dig it out and especially to try to move it so the snowplow could clear the snow away from the parking lot. I'm getting slightly more confident driving in snow now but that doesn't mean I want more of it! It's spring, let's bring on the warm weather!

I'll be going into Boston on Friday night - hard to believe that I've been here since July and have NEVER been into Boston. Well, apart from going to the airport but that doesn't count. The reason I'm going Friday night is because the Boston Symphony is staging "Fidelio", which is Beethoven's only opera. And since I am currently totally obsessed with Beethoven, I thought I should really go and see it. It shall be an adventure to drive to the "T" (which is what the metro is call here), leave the car there and get into town and then back on a Friday night. But I bet it will be well worth it, I can't wait!

So... time to go and make some chilli so I can freeze it to have something to eat in the next few days. Yum, yum!

More later this week! Buh byyyyeee!!!!!