do you need an excuse to have a full month of buttercream and cake in your life?

For the month of July, fellow Edmonton blogger, Lindsey (from Hot Polka Dot -- yummiest blog ever!) and I took the Wilton's Decorating Basics class at Michaels! 

Peewoony is chin in greek. Peehoony is a wise sage who may or may not know...stuff

Mostly everything turned out super pretty. I say mostly because some ideas were definitely better than others (those aren't pink carrots, you guys. They're strawberries and on second look, I probably should have put the leaves facing down), and my ribbon roses ended up looking more like frilly carnations -- not that that's a bad thing (I blame this one on the icing. Butter gets too soft after a while. Lindsey's are better). I didn't even bother taking pictures of my pompom flowers (most of the class agreed they did not like how those looked anyway) or my shaggy mums (Lindsey managed some cute ones on her cupcakes and I [sorta] liked mine in miniature form). I also never ended up putting a shell border on anything, even though I was super psyched to learn how to do them when I found out about their existance.

My favourite techniques have got to be the stars, drop flowers, rosettes, dots (these are way trickier than they look), writing (what to write is an entirely different problem), leaves (these are way easier than they look), and just simple basic things like icing and filling cakes and cupcakes and those weird little tricks you never think of but are completely genius the moment you hear about them.

Everything was pretty delicious, too. Do you remember gollum from Lord of the Rings? Well, it took every ounce of my strength to keep from grabbing everything, crouching in a corner of our house, and licking buttercream off cakes while whispering, "my precious."

Easy sugar cookies and Wilton's decorator's icing (I think these cookies taste better with royal icing. The Wilton's icing is way too sweet for me -- if that were even possible)

yogurt banana cake with dulce de leche filling and chocolate buttercream (This is the cake I wish we'd kept for ourselves. So yummy!)

vanilla cupcake with peach jam filling and vanilla buttercream

Lindsey's devil's food cupcake with raspberry jam filling and almond buttercream

Bonus cupcake!
(because I couldn't decide what to make for class)

Graham cracker cupcake with milk chocolate glaze, homemade marshmallow fluff filling (I discovered it's way smarter and more economical to just buy this) and topped with homemade marshmallows (Surprisingly, these were not as delicious as the vanilla cupcakes)

brown sugar cake, homemade strawberry filling and chocolate glaze with chocolate and strawberry buttercream icing. (While good, I probably won't make this cake again. I found it a little on the dry side.)

This whole experience was so much fun, I'm kind of contemplating taking another more advanced course!