My First Cake Decorating Class

So tonight I took my first cake decorating class. THIS cake was a comedy of errors! First I had to take in an 8" cake. Well, normally this is not a big deal, but my oven is not working. So I mix my batter, throw it in a pan, & head to my mom's to bake my cake while we watched Big Brother (it's a guilty pleasure of mine, I admit!). I get home & discover I'm supposed to have an 8" cake and I used my 9" pan. Oh well, it'll have to do. I'm supposed to torte it (one of my fancy new words! *L*) so I cut it in 1/2 and go to put the parchment paper in the center and the stupid cake falls apart. I decide my cake is just going to have to work. I freeze my cake per instructions, make my frosting & head to class. It was SO much fun! I learned how to properly use some of my tips, how to smooth my frosting with parchment paper. I also learned how to transfer designs onto my cake. For those of you who decorate cakes often these are probably simple tips, but for someone who's always just figured things out on my own these tips were huge!

So I finish decorating my cake (yeah, it's not exactly round anymore - I need to work on the whole transportation thing) & decided I'd drop it off at my kids house. Umm, didn't think about transporting a decorated cake after class.... So I bought a box to take it in. 9" cake, 10 " box. The math works, right? I thought so too, but then I went to put the cake in the box & realized I'd used a 12" cake circle. DUH! So I cut off the edges to make it "fit". I learned a lot tonight...