For our second day of tests, we were being graded on how well we iced cakes. We had made a white sponge cake the previous lab, and we had to make a chocolate sponge cake as well. We've made these cakes a MILLION times now, so it wasn't difficult at all. While the chocolate cake baked, we made the buttercream for the white cake. The buttercream recipe we use had a pound of butter and half of a pound of shortening! So they don't use the "butter" in buttercream lightly. Again, the recipe for the icing was simple, but it was how we iced the cakes that we were being graded on. We first had to cut the cake in half horizontally so that it was two layers. As someone who has a hard time cutting straightly in the first place, this is much more difficult than it sounds. We then iced the middle, then the top of the entire cake and the sides. The sides of the cake had to be combed, which just means you have to take this triangular tool that has a pointy edge to it, and pull it across the sides (see photo)This ensures that the icing is even. Again, this is much harder than it sounds. You have to make sure that you can't see the cake through the icing after combing it, and this was my biggest problem. I had a little help with this part. We then had to even out the icing on the top and pipe sixteen rosettes along the edge. I did this, but once I counted my rosettes, I only had fifteen! That wasn't so good... so I had to start all over. After finishing, my instructor said it looked very good! I added a little extra decoration by melting some white chocolate (which was also in the vanilla buttercream) and piped some swirls on the top. The chocolate sponge cake was a little different. It was a slab cake, so it was rectangular instead of round. This made icing it a little trickier since you need straight edges. So I did as before, iced the middle, top and sides, combed the sides (again with difficulty) and made sure the cake wasn't showing through the icing. We had to pipe a shell border along the edges of the cake, and I added some chocolate curls and some chopped chocolate for decoration. All in all, the test went fine and my instructor seemed happy enough with how my cakes turned out. We hadn't had too much instruction on how to ice cakes, so I think they worked out well for someone who doesn't really know what they're doing! Icing cakes will be one of the main focuses these next few weeks as tomorrow we are starting cake composition!

Here is what a baking comb looks like

Voila (the pictures aren't so great) !