You never forget your first wedding cake

I joined a cake decorating class offered by the local adult education school. The first class was last week and today I finished my first wedding cake.


Side note: I do recommend the local adult education schools, not only for cake decorating, but for any subject that you have interested in. It is a very affordable and fun way to learn new hobbies or get better informed.

So this is my first wedding cake. (Well, not exactly my wedding cake, but one done by me, you know what I mean :-) ).

The cake itself is just plain white cake from a box mix
(I know, shame on me !!! :-( ) and the filling is just a little bit of the icing. This is all about appearances, not contents, hahaha ....

Cake decorating is a lot of fun and it is sort of a meditation exercise. Even though I am not that creative, I can come up with some basic designs and I gladly follow existing designs. Icing a cake is a lot more challenging than it sounds, but once someone shows you the ropes, then you suddenly say to yourself: "Yes, I can do this!!".

Today, I would like to share these basic decorating steps with you:

1. The layers of the cake need to be leveled and the sides even. Do not use pans that have angled sides. To level the cake, you can either use a cake leveler or you can cut it by hand. It all depends on how steady your hand is and how good your knife skills are. I have been using a cake leveler.

2. Before you put the filling on the cake, pipe a line of icing around the outer edge of the surface where the filling is going so that it creates a dam and prevents the filling from spilling over the outside once you put the top layer on. (Sorry I do not have a picture of that at this moment, but I will take one next time).

3. Before you start icing the cake, you need to seal in the crumbs, so that once you spread your icing, the crumbs do not get all over the icing and mess it all up (we do not want messy cakes after all!). In order to seal the crumbs, you dilute the icing in a tiny bit of water until it reaches the consistency of plain yogurt and then you spread a very THIN layer over the cake. Let it dry. (about 30 minutes, depending on the room temperature and humidity).

4. After the "sealant" dried, then you are ready to start icing.

Some of you might be wondering why I wrote "Thank you" on a wedding cake. Well, as we cannot possibly eat a cake per week (we could, but we don't want to, do we?), I am counting on the generosity of friends that will accept a weekly cake donation, so I thank them in advance! :-)