Rude sculptures

For class number three, we learned a few new techniques and practiced some old ones. In addition to piping the previous week's rose bases, we learned how to wrap a ribbon of icing around the tip of the base to create the center of the flower and they were supposed to look like the inset picture at the top left of my practice board. These were my supplies for working on the roses:


I had no trouble making the cone-shaped base this week, but my wraps kept falling to the side and I ended up with a bunch of rude icing sculptures:


Next, we learned how to make shells, which are usually used for borders. Most of mine ended up too skinny and I decided to try a couple of twisty rosettes as well:


We then learned how to make hearts and I had some trouble at first, but they got a little better with practice:


As seen in the photos, I used photocopies of my course book with my practice board because I didn't want to cut up my wonderful full colour book. I found the black and white versions did not hinder my learning at all.

The last technique we learned was how to make drop flowers and twisty flowers, but I messed up the icing because I used old icing sugar. I found an unopen bag the night before and thought it would be wasteful to throw it away even though it had started to cake a little. After crumbling most of it up, I mixed it with the shortening and flavour and turned it deep pink. However, it was apparent the caked bits were still there and they clogged the decorating tip so my flowers turned out wonky.

The big project for this class was to learn how to make icing bodies for these derby clown heads, but I knew I would have no use for clown bodies or heads in the future so I skipped that and started to decorate my cupcakes... Pictures and recipes coming next time!