Cakes 'R Not Us

So the cake decorating class is over, the class that I was hoping would launch me into a new hobby. Mostly it has launched me into debt from having to buy 907 decorating tips and other absolutely necessary, non-food accessories, such as Crisco. 

The class was held in a community college and attracted some attention from passing students, who expressed their amazement that they could be taking cake decorating instead of snoozing through Algebra II, and who enthusiastically volunteered themselves for any task that might involve tasting something we were making.

But although the class has not exactly turned me into Ace of Cakes, I learned a great deal from taking it, such as that I should have taken some other class. It is difficult to know which of us is more relieved that the class is over, me or the instructor, who, if she had been required to evaluate me on my cake decorating skills, would have been forced by circumstances to write I am recommending this student for remedial cake class (but with some other instructor).

Take the rose. To make an icing rose you pipe a base and then, starting at the top, you pipe a series of what looks to me like stand-up collars, and somehow when they all overlap they become a rose. That is, if you are the other students they become a rose. Even the students who had missed half the classes could make a rose. My roses more resembled a joining of Baby Bop's head with the Abominable Lettuce Head Creature.

But for some reason I could make a passable pansy, and to bolster my self-esteem after failing spectacularly at roses I became a pansy-making machine, filling my practice space with pansy after pansy while my classmates created The Eiffel Tower of Roses. The instructor did not encourage me to move on to anything else, obviously relieved that I could at least do something that did not involve stencils and spray icing.

So now I am left with this collection of cake decorating paraphernalia, and no talent. And a half jar of Crisco. At least the Crisco might come in handy this winter should we need an emergency source of fuel.