Rainbow deliciousness

My second cake decorating class was just days ago and we got to get our hands dirty. The instructor demonstrated skills such as making dots, little stars, and even writing, and we got to practice by tracing outlines on our yellow practice boards. We also learned how to make the base for the Wilton rose and the evolution of my bases can be seen from left to right:


Once we had mastered the basic skills, we learned how to transfer a basic design onto a cake. First, we place a piece of wax paper over the design, which in our case was a rainbow. Next we copied the design onto the wax paper using piping gel and flipped the wax paper onto the cake, gel-side down to transfer a mirror image. With that completed, we began filling in the rainbow with piped stars.

I had prepared coloured icing the night before and planned my colours in advance to go with the pale blue cake. Clockwise from top left, the icing colours were copper, burgundy, violet, leaf green, and teal:


I then put them in decorating bags using couplers, which I have found to be indispensable particularly for this project. That's because we needed to use the same decorating tip style for all the different colours and couplers allow you to easily switch tips for a single bag or to use the same tip with more than one bag. I have two tip #16s and they are attached to the burgundy and teal icing bags here:


I only had time to pipe one row of stars before class ended so I did the rest at home. I realized quickly that my stars were on the small side so my rainbow was too skinny to cover all of the piping gel outlines. To fix this, I simply added a fifth colour and layer to the rainbow - the green was originally just for the writing, but it also became a rainbow colour! I also used a press set to add "happy birthday" because my freehand writing left a lot to be desired. This is what my finished cake looked like:


The next day, I took the cake to a small birthday celebration with my best bud Yvonne and her family. It was her sister-in-law's birthday and they needed dessert! Here are Garmy (the birthday girl) and Jonathan (her husband and Yvonne's brother) with the cake:


And here is a slice of rainbow heaven, with four layers of chocolate cake alternating with blackcurrant and pomegranate cream filling, topped with a thick layer of buttercream icing:


The cake was a hit and even though I spent about fourteen hours working on it, I'd say it was time well spent!