Finishing a cake with buttercream petal icing

Although I work in a school, I'm not a teacher.  I teach cupcake decorating as a paid hobby, and really enjoy it - so was thrilled to be asked to demostrate a finishing technique to a senior class of Cake Decorating pupils in the Home Economics Department.

I thought I may as well make the cake fun to eat, so coloured the dough and attempted the zebra interior again, this time in pink and white.  I wasn't sure who exactly would eat it, but they may as well enjoy it, right?

I took the cake into school baked and cooled and with just the crumb coating on, to allow the pupils to see how I filled the piping bag and did the technique right from the start.  I was a little bit nervous, as though I recognised some of the students from previous years, I was in a different class with a different teacher - and very aware that my method of information delivery was not a qualified-by-the-general-teaching-council one...

Nonetheless, the pupils seemed eager to have a go themselves, as with the amount of practice I've had at this particular finish, it probably didn't look that difficult to them.  Until it was time to do it themselves - and didn't they do a great job?  These are 16-17 year olds who have had a term or two of cake decorating and were becoming more and more confident with their skills.  

We talked about how well they did, and if they didn't feel that they'd done as well, how they could fix that problem.

And when photographed from certain angles, no customer would notice the piping work that troubled them.

Hubby took the cake in to work the next day and by all reports it was demolished at morning tea and lunchtime!  So success all round I would say, wouldn't you?

Hubby remembered to take a photo of the interior for me, so I could see if the zebra pattern worked - I don't know, what do you think?  It's kinda hard to tell...  :)

Zoe's birthday part 2 - cupcake decorating party

Zoe's mum had read my post about the last decorating party I'd done, and kept me in mind for her daughter's upcoming birthday.  I duly arrived at the house, having prepared my naked cupcakes and tons of icing and carrying lots of different sprinkles, nozzles, piping bags and so on.

And a more attractively arty one by a photographer who was at the party.  She took lots of great pics, thankfully.

Here we see the gang,  having coloured their icing as they chose, getting it into the icing bags.

And then get right on with the task of getting the icing onto the cupcakes, and the all important task of choosing which sprinkle to place where on each cupcake.

This lovely lady was really concentrating, and had some great ideas on how to do things - you could tell she'd had some practice.

 Even boys can enjoy the decorating side of things - with blue icing, naturally 

 Here's a collage of the finished products - they all had such fun!

And the girls all proudly displaying their skill, in take-home boxes to show their parents.

Now here's a photo from an angle that I simply couldn't take - it's me, wearing my attractively large white Becca Bakes tee-shirt.

 Thanks so much for inviting me to be a part of your birthday celebrations Zoe!!

 

Last lesson before Christmas

My remit - as the school baking lady/parent volunteer baker - is to choose easy, fun, fast recipes, so that the kids don't lose interest part-way through and so that we have enough time to complete all the tasks in the allocated lesson time.  I had thought that this lesson's recipe (for simple, roll-out sugar cookies) fit that bill, but as John Steinbeck so aptly wrote many years ago, 'the best laid plans of mice and men aft gang awry'  (it's a good few years since I studied this book in high-school English Lit class, so if that quote isn't verbatim, then let's call it a paraphrase).

Here we can see the instruction board that the teacher made - not too many ingredients (top left), tasks (right hand side) or length of recipe (lower left) - right?

This recipe required a hand-mixer, so the teacher kindly brought in her vintage Kenwood number - some of the children had never seen nor used one, so it caused much merriment.

Everyone wanted a turn!

You won't be surprised to learn that the resultant dough was rather sticky, probably from being overworked.  So we just spread out more flour before rolling out the dough and stamping out the fluted circle shapes (I'm telling you the actual shape of cookie, because when you look further down you may not recognise those shapes as circles, bless them (we didn't have a spatula with which to lift up the cookies onto the tray))

Here we see a couple of the children rolling out the last possible bits of dough in order to stamp out just one more cookie!!

And the final tally - 3 trays of roll-out sugar cookies, counted just as the bell was ringing for the end of the period.  The school is gearing up for the St Andrews Day (November 30th) performance and then the Christmas Show so we won't have time for any more lessons this year.  Here's hoping they want me back next term/next year.  Happy Holidays kids!

Teacher Becca

Back to school for our baking group again this morning.  It was a bit less well organised than our first lesson, as I realised on Sunday evening that I hadn't confirmed the recipe we would be making this morning.  I looked through the book I had in mind, to find the Cheese Straws recipe and photocopied it and took it in to the school office for the teacher, Mrs F.  But I was busy yesterday, and hadn't had a chance to call her and see if that recipe was ok.

So I turned up at the school this morning and apologised but luckily the recipe was perfect, and she'd found time to do her images for the lesson.  Phew.

The children came into class, saw the board with all its information and their names against the particular task (removed for the photo) and got straight to work.  Mrs F was dealing with another student just outside the classroom and was proud of their good listening and remembering skills when she saw what they had done.

 The table all set out, some ingredients already weighed out...

 Mixing up the flour, butter and grated cheese with spoon.  Which didn't really work, so time to get messy!

Eww!

These were meant to be straws of cheese, but after being rolled out and cut by a group of excited children, they are just long fingers of cheese mix, ready for the oven.  Hope they taste good!!

Before I left, we agreed on the recipe for the next class and have agreed to exchange email addresses and try to agree the following classes recipe at the current class - that should put less pressure on us teachers  ;)

Party entertainers are we

I had been approached before about offering cupcake decorating parties, but not really given it enough thought and it never worked out.  This time however, I gave it proper attention, worked out exactly what I would need to do to prepare and bring with me, and it was Game On!

The girls had no idea I was coming, so they were pleasantly surprised to disover what the party entertainment was.  They were 10 years old, or almost 10, so a good age to take in what I wanted to show them. 
I brought baked vanilla cupcakes for each child, plus spares on which to demostrate.  Plus a big bowl of fresh white vanilla buttercream, ready to be coloured.  I chose 5 colours for the icing and about a dozen different sprinkles of all sorts of shapes and colours, plus a small tub or two of non-toxic foodsafe glitter, just for fun.  Any more and I felt the girls would not be able to choose...

 The birthday girl trying out her first colour

 And her second.  Nicely done T!

A friend mastering the technique required to swirl her icing.

 The gang showing off their colourful handiwork - they did so well and we all enjoyed ourselves and had a lot of fun, parents included!!

 Boxed and ready to take home to show their families - well done girls and thank you so much for sharing your 10th birthday with me :)