Trip to California

This year I had the great opportunity to go to California to attend one of Bronwen Weber's cake classes. Now if you are into the Food Network and watch the cake competitions then you should know who she is... if not, then google her. She does absolutely amazing work and has competed in over 15 Food Network competitions! It was a three day class from 9 to 5, kinda pricey, but worth it I think. I will go on about my cake class more in the next blog post. My good cousin Brittney came with because she had never been to California before, but didn't take the classes with me. She just slept in and relaxed by the pool in the nice weather all day while I was in classes.

We left last Saturday and got into LA pretty early so we decided to head to the mall for some shopping and then to the beach. Unfortunately the weather was not that great that day and pretty chilly down by the beach so we did not swim or anything (which was just fine with me!) but it was still fun to go.



We went to Disneyland the following day for more fun. It was a weekend day and EXTREMELY busy, we only went on like six rides because the lines were so stinking long! Last time David and I went was on our Honeymoon in January, it was wonderful! No lines anywhere! I think that I won't go again unless it is an off season. It was still alot of fun though and well worth it. My favorite place there is definitely Toontown. I just love the whole feel and animation of it.




Inside Minnie Mouse's house.
I couldn't resist getting a picture by the deflated cake in the oven!

The rest of the week we went down to Beverly Hills and Hollywood to do a little sight seeing, but the traffic was horrible all the time so we didn't do a whole lot other than that. It was a really fun trip and I was so glad the my cousin came with me, but I missed my little family SO much and very glad to be back home.

Bronwen Class

Brownwen is an amazing lady. She is very smart and knows her stuff, it makes me realize that I really should go to pastry school. She is just as outgoing and crazy as you see on TV, but also very sweet and makes sure she helps everyone.



Like I said earlier that the class was only three days, but I did learn alot. I am not going to go into every detail because this post will end up being so long that no one will want to read it but I will run over the main details! We did two cakes during the course. The first one was a big baby doll and the second was a three-tier topsy turvy or "caddy whompus" as she called it.

The doll cake started out with a structure made out or PVC and plastic so it is completely food safe, the stand was about twenty inches tall. You could adjust the arms and stuff to pose the baby however you wish. The clear acrylic plate in the middle is to stack cake, so the stomach part of the baby will be the actual cake.



Next we covered the legs in modeling chocolate, not fondant, and shaped to look like baby legs. Then we stacked layers of cake in the middle and carved a belly and booty. We then attached the PVC arms and covered and shaped using more modeling chocolate. Iced up the cake and this is what mine looked like at that point...



The first thing we did after that was cover the arms and legs in an ivory colored fondant. Then we did white ruffles on the babies bottom for underneath the dress and white sleeves and a shirt. Then we wrapped pink fondant around the front and back and added straps for the dress. I added some bows and a little collar to mine.



Then we added some socks and fondant booties, made some fondant hands (that were a pain to get to stick without sagging or falling off), and decorated a Styrofoam ball for the head. We just wrapped some more ivory fondant on the ball, made indents for eyes and cut a mouth. We made small white dots for the eyes and added blue and black centers to them and a ball with indents on the sides for a cut little nose. We could wither do hair or a hat to finish it off. I chose the hat because it was easy and I was tired of working on it for two days. But I thought that they turned out really cute and I couldn't bear to break it down and kill it, so I had them ship it home for me!



On the last day we did a square three tier topsy turvy cake. On this cake Bronwen taught us a quick and easy decorating technique on each side. Most of them I already knew like stripes, polka dots, diamonds, and stuff like that, but she did teach us some really cool piping designs and tips. I must say however piping on the side of a cake is harder than it looks! I did not stack up my cake on the stand because I did not want to have to wash it at the hotel to take home so I just took a picture of Bronwen's cake to show you what we did. Of course hers looks 100% better than mine did, that's another reason why I am posting hers!



It was so much fun and I learned alot. If you are into cake decorating (Rebekah) or just want to learn, if you ever get a chance to do something like this, DO IT! I highly suggest it and you won't regret it!