Tuesday was the first day of cake decorating class that required actual cake decorating. I have to admit, I was worried my cake wouldn't come out well, and I'd either have to start over or show up with a cake that showed how obviously I did not follow directions.

Friday night I made the icing. Two pounds of drivert sugar and one pound of high ratio shortening later, I had a big bowl of icing ready to go. I only made half, because in class they'd said one batch of ingredients should last two weeks ... but then I was afraid I'd made too little. After all, I'm just learning, and you always need extra when you're learning.

I didn't buy a professional pan with very squared off corners because we have a 9x13" glass pan. I figured I'd just cut off the sides to make the corners square. I did buy a $3 leveler, cake release, and large icing knife. Theses were totally worth it (and less than the cost of one pan!).

Saturday I made the cake and filling. Milk chocolate cake with peanut butter filling ... mmm. This is where the leveler came in huge - it was so easy to level and split!

Sunday was the hard work. The base icing was to be a pastel color, so the decoration could be white. I used an enormous tip and bag to do it, which I'm not sure worked better than using a spatula, but oh well. Mistake #1: do not hand mix coloring in to your icing. I thought it came out really uneven and really bright, but it ended up someone in class had a super hot pink cake. It was awesome.

The end result:

Here you can see the inside, and my leftovers.

Tuesday we were all a little nervous about how our cakes looked. I was feeling a little ... ghetto, I admit. But it ended up they were fine! We practiced some basic borders on wax paper with various tips, and then switched over to the cakes. They drew an example on the chalkboard, and walked everyone through step by step. I'd highly recommend drawing out an icing pattern if you're doing something more complicated. That way you can cover up the less sightly parts (like the "lace" pattern - the border covers the uneven stops and starts).

The end result:

Ta da! It's really not as hard as it looks! Not bad for a first try with the right tools.