1st Cake Decorating Class Cake Results

So 20 odd some years ago I stepped in to Leewards (yes - that's how long ago as this store doesn't exist anymore) to take my very first cake decorating class.  And here I am some 20 odd years later taking the class again.  I needed a good refresher.  The very first night of class, which was 2 weeks ago, we just took notes on what to expect, etc.  I left the class already learning new things.  Most importantly, how to ice a cake smoothly without bits of cake showing through the icing.  Which is my biggest pet peeve when doing cakes.  So I learned about dirty icing the cake first and then re-icing the cake with the nice coat the next day.

 So here is my "before" shot of my cake.  Already dirty iced and then iced again.  I still have to practice the dirty icing technique but for doing it for the first time I was very happy with how it turned out.

 And here is what I did in class.  We were told to bring cookie cutters to class and 3 different shades of frosting.  We learned the scalloped edge, making pearls, making stars and we started the base of the rose.

 I went a step further and decorated on the side of my cake.

 I did two of these little hearts along with the big triple heart on the sides of the cake.

Just a close up which shows the star tip detail inside of the pearl outline.  Not bad for a refresher!  We'll be working on flowers for class this week with cupcakes.  I made my cupcakes lastnight using a simple 1-2-3-4 box recipe from the Cake Flour box I had, and the cupcakes don't look the greatest this morning.  Oh well, they're just practice cupcakes!  I'll post those in a couple days!