Hipster Cakes Are All the Rage

The past couple of days, a friend of mine and I were plotting a surprise birthday cake to make for her husband. We thought about Lost, and Willy Wonka, and Books, and all manner of things that I am unskilled enough to try to achieve. Later, we settled on a little hipster bow-tie cake, suitable for the pocket protector wearing nerd you know and love.

The final product

Now I no Ace of Cakes or whatever, but I think this little guy turned out alright. Jon and I both worked on it, as we are wont to do nowadays when I have an order. One thing we did notice is that when a cake order comes in, tension runs high. We always believe our cake looks awful. Whenever it is delivered though, it aways brings joy. After this last bout of slinging icing and obscenities, it was decided that I need to go ahead and start my cake decorating classes. The theory is I will become more comfortable with the basics and won't fret so much.

I drove down to Hobby Lobby to sign up for the Wilton Decorating Course #1 a week ago, which was a feat in and of itself. The cashier was a total bonehead, but I walked out with my registration ticket in hand. Only $20 for a class! What a steal! That's when I started to read the back of my form. I forgot to pick up the supplies I needed for the class!

Later that week, I trudged back to HL and started grabbing the items from the supply list. My register total: $200! I almost fell over dead. How could a 2 hour class need so much crap? Thankfully, the other wilton courses use the same stuff so I will not have to repurchase anything. Jon is demanding that I take all the courses, even the ones I think are not up my alley (i.e. "Making Icing Flowers!") These cakes look like the old lady cakes you can get from Wal-mart. I would hope I produce a more ahem...slight artistic and higher quality product than that. Jon feels that may be true, but at some point, someone will want a granny cake for Mother's Day or something. So I will acquiesce and take it next.

Tonight is my first class, and I am about to head out with ym 3 bags of supplies. I'm nervous that it is going to be a complete disaster, and that I can't possibly learn enough in a 2 hour class to make a decent, plain looking cake. However, YouTube is quickly becoming a poor substitution for actual classroom instruction. So, away I go, dignity the only thing left to lose. Pictures of my work will hopefully be posted in the morning. Wish me luck!