Mrs. Smurf and her heavy metal.....

During the past two weeks I took a Fondant and Gum paste class. The first class was last Tuesday and the final class was last night.

The first week I was still really sick but had paid for the class and it was non-refundable so I was determined to go...We were supposed to be learning how to make a flower bouquet out of gum paste to go on top of the cake. The teachers was incredible...it looked so real. Mine on the other hand....well I don't think I will be trying to make it again anytime soon. It was supposed to be a bouquet with wire stems (almost like a corsage) that you could pull off the cake and reuse. Well the teacher accidentally bought the wrong wire so it wasn't strong enough to hold the flowers up. So in the end we ended up cutting off the wires and just arranging the flowers on top of the cake (keep in mind the flowers still had wire inside of them...just no longer had a stem). Overall, I definitely wasn't too fond of the class...probably mostly becuase the cake wasn't my style and I couldn't seem to grasp the concept of making the dang flowers...

I brought my cake the next night to the youth activity and I stepped out of the room for a few minutes when everyone decided to dig into the cake...I had yet to tell everyone that they shouldn't eat the flowers....so when I got back I was informed that one girl found a staple in her cake....which made me laugh a little because it obviously was NOT a staple...rather a wire and everyone else in the room had probably eaten wire without even noticing! YUCK! I wouldn't even try eating the flowers in the first place....fondant and gum paste tastes yucky, let alone with wire in it! Guess that is a lesson learned not to get anxious and just dig into something before you are given permission...because ya never know what could be in it!

I wasn't too excited about yesterday's class after the previous class experience but I decided to go to the class anyways just to see what they were teaching. I am really glad I did. We made a present cake, much more my style....I learned a lot of useful fondant techniques that I know I will use again. I definitely like modern styles of cakes...so yesterday was much more up my alley.

We had to add color to our fondant. Using fondant is a lot like playing with play dough. The teacher put a huge glob of coloring in our ball of fondant and we had to squish it around until it was all mixed. Everyone ended up with bright red hands except the teacher...guess in 20 years of cake decorating you learn the tricks of the trade! Anyways, if my hands would have been blue, everyone would have been calling me a smurf today, no joke! I think next time I will probably just buy fondant that is already colored...I am way too messy of a cook to probably ever catch on to how to do that process in a "non messy" way!