Just another cake

I went to my cake class last night thinking that we are going to make different flowers out of royal icing. Well...as it turns out we only made another rose. The process was different this time. Since I started taking this class, this is the 4th way of making a rose. I didn't realize that there's so many ways of making them. First one I made was with butter cream, then with royal icing, then with fondant and finally fondant and gum paste combined. Yup, that too. I didn't know you can combined the fondant and gum paste. And what's the difference between the two? Here's the definition I found from Wikipedia and Sugar Craft respectively:

Fondant - a cream confection used as a filling or coating for cakes, pastries, and candies or sweets. In its simplest form, it is sugar and water cooked to the soft-ball stage, cooled slightly, and stirred or beaten until it is an opaque mass of creamy consistency. Rolled fondant is commonly used to decorate wedding cakes. This gives the cakes a smooth appearance.

Gum paste - contains sugar or glucose which makes it pliable and slows the drying effect of air. It is easy to shape like modeling clay, can be tinted, painted on and dries with the texture and crispness of a Necco wafer. It is considered "technically" edible, but it is not palatable, especially when dried because it's hard and bland. It is versatile. It can be made into life like flowers or small decorations or pieces that can be "glued" together to make large standing ones.

Again, I underestimated how long it took to make these flowers because I only completed 3 roses after the 2 hour session. The kneading of the sugar paste took the longest time. I didn't realize how intricate the process was. I was kind of intimidated at first because the samples in the class looked amazing and delicate. Surprisingly, they are not very hard to do but they are just time consuming. My hard work has paid off. I really like the outcome of this roses. After finding that roses can be made like this, I don't think I would ever go back and use butter cream. I enjoyed making these flowers and I may have to incorporate this in to my final cake next week.

Awhile back I mentioned to my co worker that I like to bake a birthday cake for his wife...so I did. Soon as I got home from my class last night, I baked one batch of cake and I tinted the fondant with color pink. I used the roses from the class to decorate the cake and here's the result. Taa daa!!!