Advanced Royal Icing Class

This past weekend I took another Nicholas Lodge class-- Advanced Royal Icing Techniques. :)  I decided to treat myself since my birthday is on Friday.

The class covered figure piping (which I hadn't really tried before), as well as color flow techniques, pressure piping, string work with and without bridges, and some Lambeth style borders.   In the above picture, the doves were piped on waxed paper separately, and the ribbon side design was transferred onto the cake and created using a color flow approach.


Here is an example of figure piping-- this cupid was all piped with royal icing tips 1 and 2:

As a contrast, the cupid on the right side of this picture was cut out of gum paste and then over-piped with a little royal icing for added detail.

Here's some stringwork with a piped bridge and lace points, with an embroidery side design.

And here are some pressure piped letters painted silver and then attached to the cake:

We did one more dummy cake in class featuring a color flow swan and some Lambeth style borders:

The swan has some 'real' feathers in there for added detail. :)


I was a little rushed at the end of class so you can see that my scroll under the scroll border started floating down as I went along.... but I like the top border.

The class was great fun and definitely inspired me to work more with royal icing... and to reopen my Lambeth book and try a few things. :)

Meanwhile, I'm going to be teaching my first sugar class in March!!  I'll be teaching gum paste stilettos March 5-6 at International Sugar Art Collection's Studio B in Norcross, GA.  Details will be posted soon at www.nicholaslodge.com.

So in the meantime, I've been refining my shoe techniques and preparing course notes-- I'm really excited for the class and really want it to go well!

That's all for now.  Hopefully I'll still have enough time to make a snazzy birthday cake this weekend... :)

Wilton Course 2- Adventures in Royal Icing

Last night was my 3rd (out of 4) class in the Wilton Course 2 series.

In classes 2 and 3, you learn some royal icing flower varieties and make a few in class.  Because royal icing dries hard, you save up the flowers (and make some more at home) and then bring the flowers you've made to the last class where you actually decorate a cake.

In addition to the flowers, we learned to make cake decorations using color flow icing.  The technique is the same as I described in my Buzz Cake (What's all the BUZZ about?).  The only difference is that color flow icing is intended to be shinier and less airy.  This is what I used to make the birds:

I made the birds using yellow and white color flow.  Then, even though it's not really part of the course, I decided to paint the birds using a cranberry luster dust.  I used a food color pen to draw the eyes, and diluted orange gel color to paint the beaks.  Yes, I'm an overachiever. :o)

Last week in class we did the violet, apple blossom, and violet leaf.

Sorry the picture is a little dark-- here you can see the violets and violet leaves.

 

Here are the apple blossoms.

In last night's class, we covered victorian roses, daffodils, primroses, pansies, and dasies-- it was a little hectic.

In this picture, you can see the victorian rose and the pansy:

The victorian rose is made with tip 97, which has some curvature, rather than petal tip 104.  I think I prefer the classic roses...  Regardless, I painted a few of the better ones to give them some extra color/ dimension.

The pansies are made with tip 104 and tip 1 for the little central loop.  Then, being the overachiever that I am, I looked on the internet and painted some realistic patterns on them:

The cylindrical thing they are sitting in is a flower former-- the course two kit comes with a variety of flower formers in a few sizes.  Drying the flowers in or on these gives them some curvature so that they are not totally flat.

Here are the daffodils:

The daffodil petals are made by pinching their ends with your fingers dipped in corn starch.  

Here are some daisies and primroses:

I've since painted some of the primroses too-- those will be a surprise for next week.

So, if you're a fan of The Cake Engineer on Facebook, you might have noticed that I was up late piping flowers after class these past two weeks...

... That's a lot of flowers.

Next week we use the flowers (I won't be using ALL of them...) and the birds, and decorate a small oval basket-weave cake.  So that's what I've been up to!

I'm also taking a beginning fondant class a week from Saturday.  Hoping to pick up some good pointers. :)