wilton class #2...woooosah

Ok regardless of the title of this post, I was actually a little less frustrated with class this week than last week.  But I still need to vent a little, mostly because I thought I was smart enough to beat Wilton at their own game, but I was a fool.  No one is smart enough to beat them.  It's a freakin' racket. 

As I mentioned last week, I really didn't want to buy the beginners' "kit" of supplies for class.  I have sooo many tools and supplies and piping tips and bags and everything else already, and I just didn't want the duplicates.  And there were only a few things in the kit that I could buy separately.  Or so I thought.  One was the practice board, a piece of cardboard, covered in vinyl, with a piece of plastic on top.  My local Michael's was out of them two weeks in a row, so while I was out and about, I drove all the way to Ocoee (completely across Orlando from me, about 40 minutes away) to check the Michael's over there.  And they had it!!! Yay!! So I showed up to class last night, opened it up, and tried to find the page the teacher was showing us.  Well, I sure didn't have it...because I bought the OLD version (note, this was the only one on the shelf)!!  Why in the heck do they still sell the OLD version????  And where do I have to go to get the new one??  Luckily the girl who sits next to me in class is going to be nice enough to make me copies of the templates.  So frustrating!

Ok one more thing about the racket and then I will move on to the fun stuff (yes, there is some fun stuff, I am still excited about the actual learning part of this...).  One of the other required supplies is parchment triangles to make piping bags.  Wilton sells these, at about a 500% mark-up, precut into the perfect size triangle.  Now I passed elementary school with flying colors, so I decided I could handle cutting some triangles out of my much cheaper roll of parchment paper at home.  What a dummy.  My triangles came out fine, but the Wilton method requires you to tape your bags to hold them together (we don't tape them at school, so I wasn't expecting this).  Well it turns out tape doesn't stick to regular parchment paper.  Because parchment paper is designed NOT TO STICK TO THINGS!  So only the Wilton parchment triangles will work after all.  Why do I try?  I surrender, Wilton, you win....

Alright, enough already.  We did move on to a couple new techniques, still not all that exciting.  Squiggly lines, dots, circles, hearts, and clouds.  We did learn one technique I had not used before - using wax paper and piping gel to transfer a design onto a cake.  And after getting yelled at for practicing my shells (she told us to "get creative and do whatever you want"), I found out we will be starting on shells and flowers next week.  Finally the good stuff!!

Practicing dots, circles, and hearts on my lovely practice board...please ignore the first four dots

Squiggly lines and clouds

And although I refuse to eat it, I am pretty happy with the way my cake turned out appearance-wise...