EDIT: Hundreds of bakers, dozens of volunteers, thousands of baked goodies, over the course of two days and six locations and word on the street is that we have surpassed our $10,000 goal. Thank you Toronto for opening your wallets and hearts to us in the name of helping people in Japan. In the next few days, there will be a more defined amount of money, but I am so proud to have been a part of this amazing event!

Here is the second item I have made for Toronto Bakes for Japan. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be at the Amaranto Cafe to help sell these and many other goodies with the other volunteers.

Although these aren’t really deemed “healthy” with all the butter and icing, I decided to go with whole wheat flour again to offset all of the sugar. You are still welcome to use regular all-purpose or cake flour if that is what you prefer.

The green tea powder was purchased at Ten Ren, an excellent tea shop in the GTA.

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I love using Groupon and a couple weeks ago, they posted a 50% discount for a new company that offered a wide variety of cupcake decorating classes in Toronto. I knew I couldn’t miss this opportunity and I’m so glad I got to be a part of it.

I signed up for the cupcake decorating introductory class, which according to the website, included teaching us how to properly colour and use fondant which is something I hadn’t tried yet. The class itself took place downtown in an area of Toronto I had yet to explore. There were sandwich cafes, sushi bars, pubs, bakeries and cute little shops everywhere – definitely my kind of area to live in and the perfect place for a blooming cupcake decorating class.

Our instructor, Lisa, was amazing! She had set up little stations with placemats for everyone to work at and she had plates of fondant cutters and food colouring and bowls of corn starch and all the tools we were going to need to decorate. She got us started right away, colouring, rolling and cutting shapes out of fondant.

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Trevor prefers unfrosted cupcakes, claiming that their frosted friends are overpowering and can be too sweet. Most bakeries tend to pile on the icing and decorations and this tends to overshadow the overall flavour and loveliness of the cake underneath.

I usually prefer frosted cupcakes, just as long as it’s not too sweet and I think it’s nice to have a little “extra” on an already amazing, bite-sized dessert. Some cupcakes can be a little dry and this can mask the problem very well. Plus, cupcakes are awesome to decorate and icing is part of the decorating process.

A good website I like for amazing cupcake recipes is cookies and cups, but I’m always on the lookout for more baking blogs to check out, especially for just cupcakes. If you know of any, feel free to leave links in the comment section.

Have a great night!

The post To Frost or Not to Frost? appeared first on She Bakes Here.

After my final cake decorating class last week, I’ve been trying to use up all my leftover buttercream icing. I made a ton of green icing, thinking that I would use most of it for leaves and stems on my roses, but I guess I still need to learn about icing quantity.

This gave me a nice excuse to make vanilla cupcakes though, with some of the leftover cake mixes I have on hand (I know – gasp! Shhhhhh! I promise, the next post will have a homemade recipe in it, I’ve just been lazy this week!)

And since it’s March 17 aka St. Patrick’s Day, green icing cupcakes make perfect sense!

But if you are looking for a to-die-for green-themed recipe, I highly recommend Bridget over at Bake at 350,  as she did the unthinkable and made Mint Cream Cheese Brownies. It’s like she was aware of everything that I love and decided to combine it all into one sinful dessert.

I can’t make it because I might accidentally eat the whole pan while re-watching Glee. Then I’d have to do my yoga dvd a billion times to cancel it all out and fit into my work pants the next day. But you should try it, because its very likely you’ll have more self control than I do. This way, you can also torture me by telling me how awesome it is.

Lastly, I also have some very excellent news! I’m set to take a one day cupcake decorating class in April over at Le Dolci, courtesy of Groupon and their amazing 50% off deals. (By the way, I highly recommend joining Groupon, as its a great way to find out the new events and deals in your city). I’m hoping this will be more beneficial than taking the Michael’s cake decorating classes, as cupcakes are cuter and easier to handle.

Take care everyone!

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(You can read about the last three classes – Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3).

Spring is near.

Is it though?  I’m having a hard time believing it. At the beginning of the week, it snowed, but now it’s raining. I seriously haven’t seen the sun in about five days. Isn’t seeing the sun once in a while supposed to be part of the whole spring thing?

Hehe, spring thing. (Don’t mind me, I’m tired, its been a long, non-baking kind of day).

I didn’t have anything interesting to write on my final cake for my Michael’s basic cake decorating class last night, but I did enjoy learning to make the roses.

These are called ribbon roses and they are the simplest roses to make. I had a bit of a hard time because my icing was a little soft (stiff icing is key for making these).

I also loved the border. I attempted the border shell, but the icing decided it had a mind of its own halfway around the cake.

The cake was a homemade marble cake made with almond milk (thinking of Trevor’s milk allergy) and whole wheat flour (long story, but I made the cake during a snow storm and I ran out of white flour) with almond-flavoured buttercream. It was a little dense, but Trevor loved it.

Some things I learned in yesterday’s class:

1). After icing your cake, do you still see spatula markings all over the surface? My teacher had a great idea how to smooth it. Let the cake sit for 10 minutes to let the icing stiffen slightly, then place a sheet of parchment paper over the top of the iced cake and gently use the spatula over the paper to smooth out the creases and lines. I did it in the beginning of class and it made my icing look much more smooth and even.

2). Use a long piece of thread to drape over the iced cake to help line up your lettering before you write on your cake. This helps keep the words straight (something I didn’t have on me) and it is removed in a pinch with minimal markings to the surface of the cake.

3). Rather than having your roses laying flat on the cake, give them more dimension by places a small glob of icing (preferably the colour of the iced cake or the rose itself) on the surface of the cake and gently place the rose on top. I did that and it made the flowers stick out a bit more at different angles.

I was planning on taking the next level class right away, but they are all filled up until the beginning of April. Plus, I’m not sure what my schedule is going to be for the next couple of weeks, so I don’t want to commit to a class until I have a few other things in my life straightened out.

Have a great weekend!

The post Michael’s Basic Cake Decorating Class – Day 4 appeared first on She Bakes Here.

(To catch up, you can go back and read about Day 1 and Day 2 of my basic cake class).

I can’t believe I decorated these cupcakes! Every time I look at them, I get a little giddy inside. Next week for the last class, we are doing a large cake again, but this will probably end up being my most favourite class out of the level 1 basic decorating classes.

We ended up using a lot of tips to create all the flowers and petals. I’ll go through them with you and link the techniques that are demonstrated on the Wilton website (although I highly recommend learning from someone, as they can help you correct your mistakes).

The recipe for the icing I used can be found here.

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(To read about Day 1 of the cake class, click here).

Above is the cake I decorated for day 2 of my Michael’s store cake decorating class, basic level.

This week’s class was much more hands on, as last week we pretty much just watched our instructor make icing and decorate a cake. This time we had to bring our own cake and 2 batches of homemade icing, along with our materials from our kits and instruction booklet. I also brought along some icing gel colours to make the icing different shades.

When I got to the class, the first thing we did was level the tops of our cakes and then flip them upside down, as the bottom of the cake was much sturdier to ice than the fluffy top. It was then optional to cut our cake in half and fill the middle with either icing, jam or pudding. I brought along chocolate pudding mixed with strawberries.

We then iced the cake with our icing and then learned how to create the cupcake design with clear piping gel. I’m not a big fan of piping gel, as I can’t see myself using it too often. I would much rather learn how to make flowers, which will be next week’s lesson when we bring cupcakes!

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A couple weeks ago, I went to what I thought would be my first Michael’s basic cake decorating class. Due to that unfortunate mix-up, I was put in the correct class which started last night. All I could think was “FINALLY!”

This time around, it was such a relief to arrive at the Michael’s store craft room and find people with the required sugar cookies laid out. Our class was all females with a nice mixture of ages and the instructor was wonderfully informed, chatty and super friendly.

The only dull thing was that the first class was, to put it mildly very boring. At least for me.

We started out by going through the Wilton’s booklet that came with the class (these babies are $25 at Bulk Barn, so I think that was a nice steal since the class was only $22). She went over the secrets to baking a good cake and how to make your own buttercream icing with shortening. It was good for a lot of people, but except for the odd little fact, this was nothing new to me. The instructor then pulled out a hand mixer and showed us how to make homemade icing and then we passed around the bowls of icing to compare the consistencies and which ones are used depending on if you are icing the cake or piping borders.

YAWN (I’m sorry).

Halfway through the 2 hour class, she then pulled out the piping bags (YES!) and we learned how to properly fill them without getting a mess everywhere (something I’m still working on). Cookie royal icing is way different than cake buttercream icing, so I think it was easier to get into the piping bag. I did learn that I need to recut my featherweight piping bags as my markings are a little off and that might make a difference in controlling my piping and why my tips are always a little wobbly.

Our instructor pulled out a plain vanilla cake that she made for the class and showed us how to level it with a cake leveler (we joked throughout the class about how everything she showed us was getting us on the Wilton’s brand) and then she filled the middle of the cake with icing and vanilla pudding. She iced the cake with the icing she showed us how to make and then showed us how to spread it with minimal crumbs.

For the rest of the class, we then got to use our piping bags with the star tip #18 and practice making stars on our practice board and our cookies that we brought. As a last sweet treat, our instructor cut up the cake she made and we each got to have a delicious slice.

Despite the slow start, it was a very good class. I felt totally in my element around other people interested in learning cake decorating. I also think its better that I start in the basics, even if nothing is really new to me right away. Nothing would be worse than being cocky and trying to take the next level class and feeling left behind and useless with icing leaking out of my piping bag.

Some great things I learned from the first class:

1). Lighter pans are better for baking cakes. It cooks more even and darker pans are more likely to burn the bottom of your cake.

2). Only fill your pans half-way with cake batter to prevent the top cake lump from forming (although this part is usually cut off later when you level the cake).

3). When measuring your piping bag with the coupler base, mark the bag against the first ridge where the tip screwed in and then cut it.

Next class we get to ice and decorate a cake with a cupcake design so we have to bring two batches of homemade buttercream icing (the Wilton’s recipe) and a round cake.

Looks like I need to buy a round cake pan for next week!

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