Decorating cakes - a fond memory

So, I'm watching some episodes of the Ace of Cakes on Fancast.com and it reminded me of how I once dreamed of owning a cake decorating business.

I grew up watching my father decorate cakes for folks in our church. He had some Wilton books that he used to learn how and we'd watch him. I remember one time when the eldest daughter of my mother's best friend was getting married and when the took the top layer out of the box, it fell. In a panic, they called my father to see if he could fix it. He mixed up the buttercream icing and once we were all dressed for the wedding, headed over to the church and he was able to fix the cake so it looked like it had never been dropped.

Anyway, when I moved to Houston, I took the opportunity to take some Wilton courses at Michaels and loved it. In 2001, I had moved out to Alvin and hadn't decorated any cakes in over four years but my neighbors across the street, Michelle and Chris, were getting married and had a tight budget. I offered to decorate their cake and another neighbor offered to bake it.

Please pardon the bad photos, I had a really cheap digital camera at the time.

On Wednesday, 7/25/01, I made the roses and left them out to dry. Not bad for not having made any in over four years.



Here is the basic cake that I put together on 7/27/01. I didn't level it quite right, so it's a little crooked, but hey, I never said that I was a professional. I put it in the frig overnight to thaw.



Saturday morning, 7/28/01, I decorated the groom's cake (note to self: never make buttercream icing with real butter in July in Texas). Once that cake was put in the frig to delay the melting of the icing, I started on the wedding cake again. I added another layer of icing around the sides and on the top. This photo is after I added some scallops and trim. I was really starting to worry because the cake really looks tilted from this angle and I wasn't sure if there was enough of the decorations on it.



After adding the roses and some leaves I felt much better about the cake. It really looked quite nice.



Here's another view of the cake. This is at about 3:00 pm Central time on 7/28/01, the wedding is at 5:00 pm. At 4:30 pm, Jessica carried the grooms cake over and I carried this cake. I was handed the topper and I placed in on the cake. The groom's cake started to melt because I had used real butter in the butter cream icing and it was very hot an muggy that day. Both Michelle and Chris were extremely pleased with both cakes, so I'm happy that they came out well.



Enough of memory lane ... I wanna decorate something ....


Shorah Y'all!