Cake Class

I just took a cupcake decorating class - it was supposed to be part of my Mum's birthday gift but she couldn't make it, so I took my sister-in-law Clare.

I've always shied away from 'that icing stuff' (especially considering the 'nervous breakdown cake' I made for Mum's birthday) but we had a short demo and just got on with it - granted my first - the yellow one on the far side of this pic, really wasn't that beautiful but I was pretty pleased with the rest of them - weird how when I got them home both Mark and I peeled off the icing and mostly just ate the cake!   The class was lots of fun and involved around 25 people circulating round the room making up four cupcakes and then us all having afternoon tea, which was basically an awful lot of cake with cups of tea.  Yummy.

For this one (above) I made roses and leaves out of royal icing and piped the top - I'd mostly been terrified of piping but really, after I'd seen it done, it was soooo easy...and I loved making the roses and leaves - there is a new product - edible paints - which we were playing with, and boy, was that fun!

What the class mostly taught me though was what it was like to be a beginner at something - sometimes, with the work I do day to day, I can lose sight of that and I always refer to jewellery making and the composition of work as nothing difficult or special - when someone has a special talent - like cakemaking or making jewellery, it can be difficult to identify with someone starting out and understand just how much like a fish out of water they can feel.  Well, I know now, and I'm humbled.