Cake Class #2

I am dubbing this cake my clown cake...mostly because of the bright colors.  Last night's cake class was not like I expected.  I was under the impression the teacher would direct us on the new skills for the night and then set us to work.  However, instead it was more of a do it at your own pace, and the teacher would just help with questions that arose...instead of a visual demonstration to get us started. 

I ran into a few problems.  First of all, my frosting which started off way too stiff because I had put all my frosting in the fridge, ended up being far too soft, and that gave me all kinds of problems.  Yes, I did use butter instead of shortening because I prefer the taste and the more natural process for making frosting.  Secondly, I deviated from my original coloring scheme which resulted in a more clown-like cake than I had intended; however, if I call it a clown cake, it doesn't seem so bad.  Next we didn't pay careful attention to the lesson plan book, so we didn't transfer the pattern to our cake the correct way...thankfully it still worked without destroying all the frosting.  Of course our teacher showed us the correct way after she saw us do it the wrong way.  Finally, I didn't put a filling in my cake...just used more butter cream frosting because I ran out of time, and my boys lost patience with my fiddling in the kitchen.  A filling would have helped even out all the sweetness from the butter cream frosting...oh well!

For next week, perhaps I will try using a butter cream frosting I have decorated with before and see if it makes a difference since I had so much trouble with this recipe.  Also I learned I am not a huge fan of using the copy and paste pattern idea.  If you don't make sure to frost over the lines, you can see the piping gel peeking through the frosting.

For the cake itself I followed the recipe in my Better Homes and Gardens cook book for the Citrus Yellow Cake...essentially a yellow cake with finely shredded orange peel added into the batter.  I wanted to try something different since that is part of the fun for me in taking these classes is to test out new cake recipes.  I didn't have enough time to really go crazy, and I also didn't make a store run, so I had to make do with what I had on hand.  The citrus cake is different.  It is flavorful, but I think it would taste better with a luscious cream cheese frosting instead of butter cream...the butter cream is just too sweet.  Either that or perhaps I am just not a huge fan of a citrus cake.