Weekend Cooking: A Christmas Tree cake

Last weekend my friend and I did a cake decorating class. We have been talking about doing one of these classes for a couple of years so it was exciting to finally be there. 

Here's a summary of the process that we went through.

The cakes, which are white chocolate mud cakes, had already been made. This is because it is best for the cakes to be cold when you are decorating them so there wouldn't be time, in what was scheduled to be a 3 hour class, to cook, cool and decorate the cake. As it was, the class went long.

The first thing that we did was to make fondant decorations. Whilst we only needed one for a cake there were a variety of different shapes. They had a special dehydrator in the classroom, but at home you would let them dry out on the bench overnight. 

Next, we needed to slice the cakes  in half using a cake wire cutter. This was one of the first pieces of equipment I ever bought, and yet I never really got the hang of using it, so there were a couple of handy hints about how to measure and then slice to get even sizes and using the wire to level the top of the cake. Normally I would try to do this with a knife.

We could then begin to build the cake, laying with the provided buttercream. We each were given around 900 grams of buttercream, which is a lot! This was then followed by a crumb coat, which is a very thin layer of buttercream which catches any crumbs so that the final finish on the cake is very clean. Once you have done the crumb coat, the cake needs to go in the fridge for around 20 minutes. Because the crumb coat is cold, it will help the final frosting layer.

Then it was time to do the outer layer of frosting.  I like making cakes, but I do get impatient when it comes to decorating, so this was a good lesson for me. When I normally use buttercream, I tend to slap it on the outside and spread it using a spatula, but this time we were encouraged to pipe the icing around the side and then use the cake scraper to smooth it. I will definitely use this technique going forward. 

You can hopefully see that the design was for a ragged top lip rather than a very smooth edge, and then also the swirl design on the top which was created by dragging the spatula as it is digging into the buttercream and you are turning the turntable.

Once again the cake needs to go back in the fridge to set before we add the final decorations. While we waited we got to practice piping the design using some of the leftover buttercream.  Now it is fair to say, I need lots of practice when it comes to piping!

In order to create the variations in colour in the tree, we took two different shades of green and put them on clingwrap and then created a sausage with the two colours merged together.

And finally, it is time to decorate. The first thing we did was add some texture to the side of the cake. This was achieved by using a gloved hand with a little buttercream on it and then gently dab on the side of the cake. 

We can then add some small sprinkles to the top, and then pipe the tree onto the side of the cake, add the sprinkles so that they look like Christmas bauble, add the fondant star and spray with glitter. I can't take the credit for how good the piping looks on my tree. I had some help from the teacher. And then it was done! All that was left to do was to try to transport it home without doing too much damage.

Originally I was thinking that Robert and I would just eat this, but in the end, it looks too good, so it is now going to be part of our family Christmas lunch which is on today. It's been in the fridge, so I just had to take it out this morning so that it comes back to room temperature. If we needed it to last a bit longer, it could be frozen without the fondant decoration. I suspect there might be leftovers, so maybe I will freeze those for when we are back from our trip

This is the first time I have done such a hands-on cake decorating class, but I already know I will be going back at some point in the future. They also do cookie decorating so maybe we will try one of those classes next time.

Have you ever done a decorating class similar to this?

To those of you who are celebrating Merry Christmas! 

Weekly meals

Saturday - Out for dinner
Sunday - Baked tuscan chicken
Monday - Smash burgers
Tuesday - Indian prawn curry
Wednesday - Swedish Meatballs and mash
Thursday - One Pot Pastitsio
Friday - Pizza

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