Who knew roses would be easier than carrots???

Before today, I would have said hands down that buttercream carrots would be waaaay easier than buttercream roses. For some reason though, those little orange fellas gave me quite a bit of trouble. It could be the fact that prior to the demo, I was thinking you start at the tip and work your way up to where the green leafy part is. I was wrong. You start with a big round tip and blob down some orange buttercream as you quickly pull it down and away. Easier said than done!

Roses, on the other hand, look so much more complicated, yet I was able to get the hang of those more quickly than the carrots. Using a rose nail (I'd always wondered what those things were for!) that you roll back and forth between your thumb and index finger, you twirl on a base, then kind of put a circular roof on top of it. That makes the center bud part of the rose. From there, you arch out petals of buttercream, gradually increasing the number of petals with each go-around. I'm still working on the height of mine.... they all are very open, but not very tall (which will make them a bit harder to work with when adding leaves). Here are some of my roses from today... sadly, my group's best roses, which we were going to freeze for next week, got squashed when another team's hazelnut chiffon cake tipped over on them! :(

I popped my little carrots into the freezer while I was assembling the rest of my carrot cake... we had about an hour to complete it... and let me tell you, that hour flies!!! A layer of cream cheese icing goes in the center, and then we finish them with Swiss buttercream. I got my first grade back for this carrot cake today.... (drumroll)... 4.75 out of 5!!! Yay!!! :) Here's what it looked like: 

Today we also made hazelnut chiffon cakes and pound cakes, which we'll use next time, took a quiz on conversion factors, learned about the 5 different buttercreams and 3 different meringues... it amazes me how quickly time goes, how much we can get done, and how much we still have left to do near the end of the day.

I love, love, love this class! I love everything about it! Even bringing out the trash isn't bad... because when you're in a cake class, everything you throw out smells amazingly delicious (definitely not the same for some of the culinary classes!) We didn't get to bring our carrot cakes home today, although we got to eat a slice in class. But.... the breads class next door brought over a couple of sheet pans of French baguettes, multigrain loaves, pretzels and strawberry scones... so even though I didn't have time to go grocery shopping today, I'm all set for the week in the bread department! As my fourth graders used to say, "sharing is caring!" :)