Although I did not ice my cake with silicone, I did get to use wire cutters to decorate my cake at the Icing Smiles cake decorating contest last weekend. With the wire cutters, I felt a little more in my element.
Cake decorating is definitely not my forte.
My baker/consultant gave me great instructions on how to hold the bag, squeeze it and make grass come out the other end. Every once in a while, she would stop me and adjust the bag because I would have globs of green icing coming out the top of the bag ready to ooze down my hand. I felt like a Kindergarten student using glue for the first time.
That mess would not have happened if I was allowed to use a caulking gun.
Once I finished my cake, I toured the other contestants' tables to find some really fantastic cake decorating skills.
Lisa Hodgsen and Ron Frazier decorated a 3D boxing glove smashing through the top of the cake.
Two fondant fighters sat atop another cake decorated by Leslie Dempsey and Mitch Clarke.
Mother/daughter team of Laura Morrissette and Natalie decorated their own creation, a blue cake with Reece's Pieces on top. It looked like a pillow of candy goodness!
A Teddy Graham cake was decorated by Tammy Gill and Dane Smith. It was surrounded by a fence of Kit Kats wrapped with a bow.
My Smurf cake seemed to be a hit with a group of girls who hung around my table asking questions.
Through this experience I learned a lot about decorating cakes.
What I once thought was a simple task - put the ingredients in a bowl, stir, pour into a pan, insert pan into the oven and DO NOT JUMP around the house - is definitely not the case.
A fair degree of planning goes into creating an amateur culinary masterpiece.
The cakes were voted on at the Festival of Leaves Trade and Craft Show, with the Teddy Graham cake receiving the most votes.
So I didn't win the contest, lost my bragging rights and I didn't even get a piece of cake. The moral of the story - You can't decorate your cake and eat it too.
You can however, hope your decorated creation gives someone a reason to smile.
