Cake decorating at William Angliss

For the past 4 Tuesday evenings, I have been attending a cake decorating class at the William Angliss Institute of TAFE in La Trobe Street, Melbourne. Our teacher, Greg Williams, has so far taken us through icing a fruit cake, making sugar flowers, creating a floral spray for a cake using sugar flowers and leaves and ribbon bows, and decorating with buttercream frosting. The results of my labours are pictured below.

Iced fruit cake with floral spray

Close up of floral spray

Sponge filled with jam and buttercream and decorated with buttercream and coconut


Close up of buttercream frosting

My buttercream piping effort was not the greatest because I didn't want to fuss around with umpteen dozen colours of icing or go for an elaborate but ugly design. However, despite its obvious flaws, I like its simplicity, and now that I have learnt the techniques, I can practice and improve in my own time.

I was disappointed because I went to a restaurant straight after class with my completed cakes, and the staff knocked over the buttercream iced cake twice, accounting for the smooshed piping around the edges in two places. Oh well - it still tasted the same, and I inflicted it on my work colleagues the next day.

There is one week of class left, where I believe that we are going to learn how to decorate a cake using chocolate and jelly. I am looking forward to it!