Cake Decorating: Class One, Day Two

Today was the second and final session of my Gift Box cake decorating class.  It was so fun!  I don't think I mentioned it before, but the class is taught by award-winning pastry chef Vanessa Greeley.  You can see what she can do on her website.  If you look at her portfolio (and accolades), you'll see why I'm so excited to learn from her.  I'm nowhere near her level.  Look, this is what we did today:

Not bad, by any stretch of the imagination, but nowhere near the awesome Halloween cake or frog cake on her site.  I'll keep working at it, though!

And when you consider the fact that at 7 p.m. tonight when class started, I didn't even know how to cover a square cake with fondant, I did a pretty nifty job with that.

And then, from my experience in the Thursday Topsy Turvy class, I was right on the ball with marking where I wanted the overlay of fondant to be cut.

If you notice in the photo with the overlay, I textured the top of it.  And then I had to get fancy with some fleur de lis appliqués.  Then I went a little nuts, doing the bottom of the box with a different texture, and more appliqués around the corners.

I did the bow on top, but had to bring it home with those rolled paper towels in the loops to keep them open 'til the fondant dried.  Didn't want a collapsed bow, after all!

And so I ended up with my final product, the photo at the top of this post.  Not bad, if I do say so myself!

One more class on Thursday, and then I'm kind of raring to decorate a real cake!