Wilton Cake Decorating Course 3 - Class 1

Tonight my friend, Amanda, and I started Course 3 of the Wilton Cake Decorating courses.  All I can say it that this is going to be a very labour intense class!!  Look at the amount of stuff I had to work with...

..and that isn't even everything that I brought with me!!

It was pretty fun though. We learned how to make gum glue, mix gum paste and fondant, how to properly roll it out, cut it and make a bow.  It was actually quite interesting to make and use the gum glue (which is about a tbsp of water with little bits of gum paste dropped in to dissolve).  After we mixed and coloured our fondant/gum paste mix.  We learned to properly roll out the fondant by using a 9" roller with spacers (top left in picture) on it, which help you get it to the right thickness.  Then we used this rolling cut (top right in picture)
to cut the proper width for our strips.  It was really easy, but got a bit messy, as we had to use shortening on our hands while mixing the fondant, then put it on our mat to make the fondant roll easier.  The rolling pin was no longer rolling at the end, but slide across the mat.

In the top left are the first strips for my bow.

 Once we had all the strips cut, we used a paint brush to apply some of the gum glue to one end of the strip then we folded the strips in half and made a tear drop shape and set aside to harden.

Putting the bows together.

Unfortunately they weren't hard enough when we went to put the bow together, so we had to stuff paper towel in them to make sure that they didn't fall down as we put them together.  Once we completed that, we started putting the bow together.  First, we had to cut three circles of different sizes to "glue" the tear drops too.  Then we just arranged them row by row until they were completed.

Snowman!

First layer.

Completed bow.

We now have to leave them out to air dry for a bit and then can take the paper towels out.  I think I may keep it for my final cake, depending on what else we learn.

We also learned to make bases for 3 different flowers: rose, carnation and lily.  We did this in between preparing the bow pieces and are going to be needed next week for when we make the flowers!

We started with a bit of straight gum paste, rolled it out and cut out a few different shapes, two different sizes of circles and the tiniest cute flowers!

Next our teacher told us to take one of the small circles we made and cut it in half.  Then we needed to get another small circle and one half circle and...smush them together!!  She thought it was funny because we were all focused on making sure it was all perfect and then we just smushed them.  Which was the same for all the gum paste we cut....

The small circles we rolled out into little balls and took a spaghetti noodle (#6), dipped it in the gum glue and stuck it in the balls, these made the rose bases.  Next we took the small flowers, turned them into a tear drop shape and did the same spaghetti noodle trick for the lily.

The medium circle were the most fun.  They are for the carnations.  We rolled them into balls, and then turned them into little mushrooms.  Then taking the ball on top, we smushed it out and then put it on a little foam piece and rolled it out with a little plastic stick that came in our kit.  Next we cut it down to the right size and went around the base with another plastic stick that almost looks like something you would see at the dentist.  This makes it stand up and all ruffly.  I really like these and can't wait to make the flowers next week!

My first one.  The teacher said it was really good and that
people hardly ever make them that good on the first try.
I can tell you the second one and to be redone....

Well that's it for this week!  I'm looking forward to making the flowers next week!