A Work In Progress...

I'm no Martha, but I'm putting forth my best effort!  I feel like I have a pretty good handle on cupcakes.  They're easy!  You can pick them up, turn them around, anything you need to get exactly the look you're going for.  Heck, if you mess up you can even cover them with sprinkles (see the picture...I'm sure you can tell which ones were the throw-backs).  What's not to love? 

They weren't perfect, but I wasn't feeling the best, and was in a hurry.  They were a THANK YOU to my favorite Father-in-law for fixing my car last week.  He was happy, and I'm certain ate at least one of them over the weekend.

Being that I'm confident in my cupcake skills, I decided to try my hand at cake making.  It doesn't help that Michael's is practically begging you to take the class, by offering them at 50% off.  Who could resist?  Not me!  So I signed up.  Last week was the first week.  It was lots of "practice makes perfect" and "don't give up."  I was sitting there, confidently thinking "I've SO got this."  Sunday, I baked my cake.  I knew I'd be busy Monday night because of cheer practice and Tuesday night was the class and I didn't want to take any chances.  I've never baked a cake before, for all I knew, it wasn't going to rise, or would overrise and turn out terribly.  I followed the instructors directions word for word and when I pulled the cake out of the oven, the center was sunken in.  I wasn't happy, but I figured, I'll flip it over to ice anyway, so no big deal.  No one will ever know.  I flipped it and voila, you couldn't even tell!

Monday night, I iced my cake.  Who knew that would be so hard?  The instructor made it seem like a piece of cake (pun intended LOL)!  I had my little turn table, I had my icing at the PERFECT consistency, what was the freaking deal?  It didn't want to cooperate, but in the end, I got it to look as good as I thought I could do, and called it a night. 

Last night I pulled it out and confidently took it to class with every intention of asking for assistance and advice on how to get it to not only stop sinking in the middle, but also HOW THE HECK DO YOU GET YOUR ICING TO LOOK SO SMOOTH?  When I walked in, class had already started!  I was EARLY!  Apparently most of the class had gotten there 20 minutes early (suck ups) and when I walked in 10 minutes early, you would have thought I was late!  What the heck!?!?!?!  Regardless, we proceeded thru the lesson, learned how to use our star tips, and write words and then got to decorate our cake.  For the last, measly 10 minutes of class.  NOT GOOD.  I had all of these wonderful ideas in my head, and it definitely didn't end up looking like I wanted. 

Behold...the finished product:

It's not the best, but like I said...I'm a work in progress.  Stay tuned, I'm hoping to see improvement in a few weeks!  Haha!!!