Au revoir, basketweave

I feel like it's been a million years since I talked about cake decorating (on the blog. because I talk about cake decorating in my everyday life all the time). And I have some cake pictures to share.

Last Wednesday was our midterm which involved a written portion and practical. The requirements for the practical were the following: a.) Basketweave; b.) border; and c.) flowers. Obviously our instructor looked at other details, like whether our colors compliment each other, if our cake is centered on the cake board and icing the cake.

the basketweave midterm

For my cake, I did a white on white basketweave so I could easily hide any mistakes. I did a dual border I did a shell border (in aqua) and just a dot border (not really a technical term, in yellow). I did some half daisies around the edges with a chrysanthemum in the middle.

On Thursday, we moved onto new techniques: baby shower cakes and figure piping. Our instructor asked us to try and do two cakes so we could do a baby shower cake and to a cake practicing other figure piping (like cute little bears, dogs, piggies, etc.). There are some people in class who can decorate two to three cakes each class period. I am not one of those people. But I was able to on Thursday.

the baby shower cake

The baby cake is a little cheesy, but my rosettes and border look great! And the cake says, "Babylicious" Why, you ask? Why not?! I didn't really know what else to write and I didn't want to say, "It's a Girl!"

My second cake, on the other hand, was totally cute! It is definitely one of my faves from this semester. Oh, notice how there are NO figure piped animals? That's because I suck at figure piping. After three attempts of a cute little bear that someone mistook for a cat (true story) at one point I just decided accept that figure piping is not for everyone.

the cake without figure piping

Plus, I got so many more compliments on this cake than the strange looking blue bear/cat type animal. The only issue I have is my center design is way off center. But I think the color palette, borders and dots totally make up for that, don't you?