Course Two: Flowers and Cake Design:Lesson One

Hello Everybody! Welcome to my experience of Course Two, Wilton Cake Decorating, Flowers and Cake Design.

In this lesson we learned all about color wheels and how they relate to cake decorating:

Complementary Colors: are colors directly across from each other. Example : Yellow and Purple,  Orange and Green. Mrs. Cristol explained that Complementary colors make each other look good even though they are complete opposites.

Neighboring Colors: Is a group of 3 to four colors sitting next to each other on the color wheel. Maybe you're throwing a birthday party, but didn't want to use just one color for the cupcakes you're making, you would want them to somewhat go together.Example : Yellow, Orange, and Red. Or Yellow, Pink and Red. (Depends on your color wheel).

Monochromatic Colors:  Making one color choice but using either less or more gel paste to make a bolder or lighter color. Example: Light pink, Medium pink, and Dark pink.

Triad Colors: Three colors spaced equally apart on the color wheel. Example: Green, Orange and Purple.

Then Mrs.Cristol lead my partner and I into the basics of gum paste and fondant.

Gum paste is mainly used for flowers, while Fondant is used for covering the cakes.

The most important tip learned was that: Fondant and Gum Paste pick up everything while you're handling it. Put it down on the table? You'll get specks of dirt. Drop it on the floor? It's no good.

Fondant and Gum paste dry very quickly. When not in use, it should immediately be wrapped up in cling wrap.

Coat your hands with vegetable shorting to avoid sticking of any kind and either dust or coat your working space with a dust pouch or vegetable shorting to avoid picking up dirt.

Glue Gum Adhesive:
Break about 1/4 teaspoon of Ready- To-Use- Gum paste into very small pieces in about 1 tablespoon of water, let rest for about 1 hour.
May be kept up to 1 week.
(This is used to "glue" parts of flowers together.)

Preparing a Dusting Pouch:
Fill the pouch with 1 tablespoon of cornstarch and 1 table spoon of confectioner's sugar. Pull the cord to close the pouch and tap lightly to dust when needed.
(this is used for your hands and or work area, and also used for gum paste tools.)

For class today my partner and I cut our gum paste packages into 4/4 and used one packet of the neon fondant and kneaded 1/4 of the gum paste with one of the four colors of fondant and worked them together.

My partner and I went on to making button flowers and pansies:

Button flowers are made by rolling out the gum paste and fondant substance and put into a cutter.

Pansies are formed by rolling out the gum paste and fondant substance into a see-through square and are cut with a flower cutter, then roll the ball tool over them like tracing on a foam square, then using the ball tool again, and on a bigger square of foam we "abuse" the flower by hitting it and making it pop up. Then finally glue everything together.

 

Thanks for stopping by!

-Cake Crumb Girl