Cupcake decorating Part 3

Tonight was the final session of my cupcake decorating course. Our focus tonight was mostly on creating intricate decorations, including making and using royal icing. This was entirely new to me; I love the taste of royal icing on weddings cakes (but not the cake itself, lol) but have never tried making it myself.

Our first exercise was similar to last week, where we learned how to pipe patterns using chocolate. This time, we had templates of butterflies to experiment with, but using royal icing instead, which has a different feel to piping with chocolate. (Actually, we first had to make more piping bags out of baking paper. I'm getting better, and fluked my first one tonight, but it's going to take a lot more practice to perfect this skill.) We learned how to pipe each side of a butterfly's wings then dusted them down with glitter. They need to dry overnight, then can be attached by piping a head and body.

We then had a go at working with gum paste in different ways, just like we did when we made roses in our first session. This included using miniature cutters to make different types of flowers, experimenting with shapes and 3D. I was working with yellow flower paste and we decorated vanilla cupcakes with buttercream frosting. The daisies on the left cupcake were made by using little flower moulds and piping a tiny bit of royal icing onto the centre. The gerberas above it were made with a silicon mould, something I could do with more practice in. The flower on the right cupcake was made with a plastic press then left to set inside an egg container. It is sprinkled with a tiny bit of glitter; apparently glitter makes even the biggest mistakes look better!

So what next? I have bought Tamara's brand new book, Divine Cupcakes, which was released yesterday. It is full of the cupcake recipes she uses as well as guides and ideas for decorating them. I am going to have to take some time to decide what sort of decorating I'd like to do in the future then buy the specific tools I'll need, as many will need to be ordered from overseas and I can easily see my costs adding up. I have ideas for decorating cupcakes for my parents' 40th wedding anniversary celebration in June, but will need to start small before then and practise some of the techniques I have learnt. Oh, and my sister-in-law is really keen to glean everything she can from my course, so we need to practise together.