Valentine.............

Ah, Valentine's Day. A day where some embrace the cheesy, lovey quality of an admittedly corporately created holiday, and some rail against the proclamations of love and hearts and flowers and chocolate and all that's sweet.

I had a friend on FB remind everyone this morning that St. Valentine is actually the patron saint of bees, epilepsy and plagues. I wished him many plagues of seizing bees. I do what I can.

Cake!

A while ago I posted about the aprons that I made for a cake decorating class I was taking with my sister. I thought I would post a bit about what we've learned now that we've completed 2 courses, and are 'certified' in the basic arts of buttercream, gumpaste and fondant cake decorating. That's certified.... not certifiable.


So the first course we took was on buttercream decorating. Admittedly, I had a hard time with the class's version of "buttercream" as the recipe they specified didn't actually have any butter in it.... but hey - you learn the techniques and then stick with what you know, right?

By the end of the class we had created several different piped decorations, flowers, etc and here are a couple of cakes using those techniques, but my own (IMHO, superior) recipes.