Lessons learned in Cake

For my birthday, my mom signed me up for the Wilton cake decorating basics course. I finished those classes about 3 weeks ago and have had very little reason to bake or decorate anything since. Baking a cake "just because" is a little more difficult in a house with two people who have diabetes, a cat who isn't a fan and another person who doesn't eat a whole lot of sweet treats.

Lucky for me, Craig's brother Kirk turned 30 today and our birthday present to him was making a creative birthday cake. The food theme was tex-mex and so my original plan was to make a bright red chili-pepper shaped cake. In my design debate, my mom suggested doing something "retro" since 30 is a major birthday or something like that. I finally decided to go with a pacman theme with a Funfetti cake filled with a chocolate-raspberry filling and frosted in homemade cream cheese frosting. I found lots of fun cakes that had been done but most of them involved fondant and I was more interested in attempting some of the frosting/piping techniques I had learned in class.

I learned a few things doing this cake.

• Homemade cream cheese frosting, while delicious, is quite heavy. As a result, it can be difficult to frost a cake cleanly and smoothly with. (I don't like buttercream but maybe next time I'll use it anyway since it's much easier to work with and pipe on.) 
• Piping gel is magical. 
• Having (almost) enough time, everything you need nearby and having the right tools for the job can make anything less stressful and more fun.
• The Wilton color tint is pretty much awesome. I was able to get the colors I wanted and not have globs of food coloring sticking to the sides of my bowls. 
• Torting, piping and filling cakes is not difficult. 
• Craig enjoys making design suggestions (he told me where to put the ghosts, big dots and cherries)
• In the end, no one really cares what a cake looks like as long as it tastes good. I don't think anyone really looked at the cake much before sticking 30 candles in it and then devouring almost the entire thing. 

Even though it didn't turn out quite like I was imagining, it was a good "learning experience" for me and a tasty dessert for a birthday.