Today I had the good fortune to take a cake decorating class with Food Network star and local favourite, Bronwen Weber.  Bronwen used to be a pastry instructor here in Austin at the Texas Culinary Academy. Today she taught us to make caricature cakes as well as an adorable stand-up poodle cake.

The class was somewhat frustrating. There were 16 students at 4 small tables in a very small room. You had to fight for space to roll out your fondant and you had to wait for people, like myself, who were inexperienced with an airbrush as there were only 5 airbrushes.

Those inconveniences aside, I learned some fun techniques and it was a class with Bronwen so how bad could it be?
;)

There were also a couple members of cake  decorating"royalty" present. Ruth Rickey and Janet Rosebeary were both present, having driven all the way from Oklahoma to attend the class. The class was held at All In One Bake Shop, which is owned by Jennifer Bartos who is Bronwen's sidekick for the Food Network challenges. Jennifer is a very nice lady and Bronwen is just as bubbly in person as she is on television.

Unfortunately, the cakes they provided were pretty soft. Couple that with a heavy head made from rice krispie treats and many of the poodles were falling forward by the end of the class.

Mine was perfect and didn't tip in class. The ride home, however, proved too much for the cakes infrastructure. About halfway home it started tipping forward and was resting it's ear on the side of the box.  I managed to get it in the house, snap a couple of pictures and then it split. That was hugely disappointing, to say the least.
 

My airbrushing was more than a little heavy handed so I decided to make my character cake a bit punk and gave him a mohawk and a soul patch. In the end I was pretty happy with the way he turned out. It was rather difficult to do some of the sculpting due to my long fingernails. I really need to cut them down before sculpting cakes in the future.