Cakes, cookies, and pie! Oh, my!

A modified version of this post was featured on Scrap Our Stash Show n Tell Sunday on November 22, 2010!

Thanksgiving is right around the corner and Christmas is lurking in the shadows! I can't believe the holidays are already here! The season is filled with pies, cookies, candies, and all types of cinnamon-y goodness. This year though, I'm saying move over to my traditional pumpkin and apple pies and I'm making room for CAKE! I just started taking a cake decorating class which I'm hoping will lead to more cross-crafting goodness (I envision matching cakes, invitations, and birthday cards...not to mention the memory-laden scrapbook pages! The first victim of all of this matching will be my mother-in-law who will be here on Wednesday!) It's really good timing too, everyone at work has already given up on their diets and I have a super easy method for pawning off my many decorated cakes! Here's a shot of my first at-home practice cake.

It's a strawberry cake (semi-homemade) with (homemade) dark chocolate frosting. To add to my repertoire of cake skills I also torted it (meaning it's filled with delicious strawberry jam)! It's kind of a little guy because I wanted to get some extra practice out of my extra layers, but I think it turned out pretty good anyway. The sides were deliciously smooth and then I made the grand mistake of pulling the wax paper out from under the edges of my cake. *Sigh* Should have put them closer to the edge of the cake. I guess it was a good thing though because I got to try a part of the cake (the chunk that stuck to the paper) before anyone else! Woo hoo!

I took it to work to welcome a new member to our team and the cake quickly disappeared! My boss made one recommendation for the next cake "bigger or nastier...you can't bring in tiny delicious cakes, that's just not right!" I guess if I never get the hang of writing, I've certainly got the flavor aspect covered! (Ugly cakes have fewer calories, right?) One of the guys on my team also teaches a cake decorating class so, it's pretty nice to be getting tips from him on my at home practice cakes as well as my normal cakes.

I'll be posting my cakes weekly on my blog as I go through all of the decorating courses. Wish me luck! Tomorrow we are doing a gel transfer on our cakes! Eeeep!