cake decorating, for real this time

Remember way back when I decorated my friend's wedding cake back in the day (before law school happend and all?  wow, that was eons ago!)?  Well, I just recently attended a real, beginner's class for cake decorating.  I sure could have used all this information back then...

The class was provided by CulinAerie in DC.  A few of us were taking it and we had a pretty fun time eating all the cake trimmings and licking off the icing as we were decorating (okay, maybe that was just me).  I felt a little rushed, though, as the instructor spent most of the time demonstrating and didn't allott very much time for us students to decorate our own cakes.  Though, I know if I had the time to practice, I think my piping would get a little better.

Well, let me just give you a photo show and tell:

Here are the materials presented to us at the start of class: pre-baked cakes, frosting, jam, spatula, knives, etc.

The piping tips (clockwise from back right): star tip, small hole, big hole, petal tip (yes, my names are very professional):

Step 1: Level the cake.

Step 2: Making a ring of icing so the jam filling doesn't make the cake turn into the shape of a tire:

Step 3: Adding the second layer of cake.

Step 4:  Putting on the crumb coat, and then chilling it so that your icing doesn't have cake crumbs in it.

Step 5:  While the crumb coated cake was chilling, we were practicing our piping.  The top row are rosettes, and then I tried to do a line with the star-tipped, but it didn't turn out so well...

Step 6:  Icing the cake.  If you zoom in on the picture, you can see that there are still some cake crumbs on the icing...

Step 6:  Decorating the cake.  I attempted to use an icing comb for the side of the cake.  As you can see here, it didn't work out too well.  I'm not sure if it's because I didnt' have enough icing on the sides, or if I trimmed too much cake off and it was smaller than the cake board.

Since I couldn't use the icing comb properly, I decided to just add almost slices to the side.  Looks even better, I think!

And here is my finished cake!  The yellow things are supposed to be daffodils and the red blobs are supposedly some rosebuds...the red blob with the yellow center is just my interpretation of a red daisy. 

Here is L's cake - very simple yet very pretty!

This is S's cake -- So cute and colorful!

And this is J's cake, chocolate buttercream flowers were delicious!