We continued with cakes today! Luckily, we didn't have to bake a thing seeing as we had pre-made the cakes yesterday, however we still needed to make butter creams, ganaches, decorations...etc.  We started with the white cake. We made a lemon flavoured buttercream that we "masked" the cake (this just means covering the entire cake with an even layer of icing- making sure not to let any cake show through) and brushed the inside layers with a brandy simple syrup to ensure moistness. The task of masking the cake seems simple enough and my instructor can do it in less than five minutes, tops. I assure you it is the exact opposite of easy for someone like me who has very minimal experience! It took me such a long time! You first need to put a big glob of icing on the top of the cake, then pipe icing all around the sides. You then need to semi-spread the icing on the top, and try to evenly coat the sides of the cake. The hard part is trying to keep the layer of icing even without letting any cake show through. Once you're done doing this (which takes someone like me 45 minutes!), you need to carefully scrape the edge where the side of the cake meets the top to make a perfect angle. GAH! We then had to pipe a border along the top and bottom of the cake, which is luckily something that I'm fairly good at! Next came the detailed decorations- i.e: the most frustrating thing I have experienced in a long time. We had to do a scalloped-like design along the side of the cake and we needed to also had to hand make roses. The scallop design wasn't too terrible, but the roses were what gave me the most trouble of the entire day. You first need the right piping tip- a rectangle shape that is skinnier on one end and fatter on the other. Then you pipe petal shapes on a PEN! ON A PEN! You take the tip of the pen and use that as a holder. Now, I could do this, however my icing was being very finicky. It was always either too warm and would melt right off the pen, or be too cold and come out of the tip all weird. So, I wasn't having such an easy time. Finally, when I would have a mediocre rose made, you need to take scissors (SCISSORS!) and remove the flower from the tip of the pen. GAH! Not easy. My flowers would never make it from the pen, to the scissors, to the cake. They always somehow landed on me. By the end of the class, I was covered with pink icing. I eventually had to give up on making roses since they were taking too much of my time. I had to settle for the single ugly one I made. Next was the chocolate cake which turned out much better! We made a chocolate french buttercream which is a little different from normal buttercream. You must whip egg yolks with a little sugar for forever until they become fluffy and a pale yellow. Then you need to slowly add a boiling sugar/water mixture making sure not to cook the egg (that would mean scrabbled egg in your icing). You let that whip for a while, then once it has cooled off, add a pound of butter to the mix. We then added chocolate as a flavouring. Most people used a Nutella to flavour their butter creams, but seeing as my lovely sister Margot is allergic to nuts, I took the extra step in melting my own chocolate and adding that instead. YOU'RE WELCOME! We went on to mask the cake with this icing and refrigerated it for a while. As the chocolate cake cooled, we made the ganache to go on top. This was a boiling mixture of glucose, sugar, whipping cream and gelatine added to dark chocolate. Once the cake was nice and cold, we poured the ganache over the cake. This part was also a little tricky because you don't want to mess with the ganache too much once it has been poured. You want to try your best to get the sides of the cake completely covered without having to use your spatula because this causes the icing underneath to mix with the ganache and not look very good. My ganache didn't quite make it all the way down the sides of the cake, however it wasn't bad! I was very pleased with how it turned out. I would at least have one nice cake to show my instructor! Once the ganache had set in the fridge, we piped some little rosettes on the top edge and a border along the bottom. Once the day had finished, I was exhausted from all my rose frustration, that being said, I was pleased with the overall turn out of the day (minus the stupid flowers!). My instructor also seemed to overall like my results, and hopefully overlooked my roses. I know have three cakes to eat and I'm not even sure what we'll be baking tomorrow! Anyone have a birthday/anniversary/any other celebration and need a cake?!