Today was OFFICIALLY the coolest day. The uber talented Linkie Marais visited our Advanced Baking class to teach us about cake decorating! She is soo skilled. She makes buttercream flowers, scrollwork, fondant swags, and everything in between look so effortless. I really just aspire to be like her one day!

So I met her once before at a friend’s graduation at MUW in May of 2015. Here’s the pic from almost two years ago!

She actually remembered me! Not my name, but my face which was super flattering all by itself.

So Holly Olive and I arrived in class early – 7:30 am – to help Linkie make the buttercream for our class. Since several of my classmates had absolutely never decorated a cake before, she decided to make a mostly shortening buttercream because it doesn’t break down as easily as butter buttercream and it is easier and more stable to work with. Linkie made the recipe once, and Holly and I made it an additional four times to create enough buttercream for Linkie’s two cakes, Holly’s, mine, and our ten other classmates.

Because the recipe is mostly crisco based, it makes a very white icing! The icing was actually much better tasting than I expected for having so much shortening in it! It was super durable as well, great for the warm kitchen and lots of handling with warm hands.

Linkie started off by showing us how to cut, stack, fill, and ice a two layer cake! I found it very interesting that she does not crumb coat her cakes unless they have been cut or trimmed. Every other cake artist I have ever met crumb coats their cakes! Her way did seem a bit easier and quicker though! With her cake, she then showed us a few different boarders that we can make using a round tip and a star tip. She demonstrated a bit of scrollwork, lace, basketweave, and some AMAZING buttercream flowers. I really aspire to make such beautiful buttercream roses one day. Even with all the various styles and designs she demoed for us on her cake, it STILL looks beautiful and well put together. She also showed us what to do IF and WHEN one of our cakes gets messed up or bumped. She literally scraped of part of her cake, and then fixed it beautifully with a few buttercream roses.

The theme of the day was: if you mess up, just add a rose!

This is her cake:

Linkie cut, stacked, filled, and iced another two layer cake. She then rolled out some fondant to cover her cake. I have never really known how thick fondant should be when covering a cake. I think mine is normally too thick. Linkie says that fondant should be pretty thin! You should be able to kind of see through it a little bit when it is rolled out. She says that judges at cake competitions take off points for fondant that is too thick! I never knew that, but I will definitely start paying more attention to how thick my fondant is when decorating!

Linkie, like me, dislikes Wilton fondant. I dislike it mostly because of the taste. Linkie suggested using fondant by Albert Uster Imports because it is apparently the best tasting and easiest to work with. She said that the Masa Americana is the best, and Satin Ice is next in line. They are much more forgiving and easy to use without being too flexible like Wilton.

She added a good bit of Tylose Powder to her fondant to get it to stiffen up enough to hold the shape of a bow! Tylose Powder is awesome, but a little expensive. So I normally just make my fondant decorations a day or two early to let them stiffen up with “mold” or shapes made of tin foil or paper! She made a great bow today that stiffened up within about ten minutes flat. She also showed us how to how to make marble fondant (you get some white fondant add a little color to it, fold it up but DON’T try to incorporate the color very much, and then just roll it out). It seems SO simple. I think that I normally try to make my fondant marbled looking in my hand before rolling it out which then makes it too incorporated. I am going to definitely try out this method the next chance I get! She showed us how to make a fabric looking flower and a drape of fondant! We also got to check out some of her grate Luster Dust gold colors AND her airbrush. I really want one of these as my next cake purchase! They are so nifty.

After Linkie was all done with her demos, she turned us loose to our own cakes. I cut, stacked, filled, and crumb coated my cake. I decided to just do a crumb coat because I wanted to experiment with some icing work that would add a lot of icing thickness so fully icing my cake wasn’t necessary!

I had NEVER tried a basketweave design before, so that was my design for the day. I can say that I really love it. It isn’t too terribly hard (I’m sure that my lines will get straighter after one or two basket cakes). But it turned out pretty great for being my first time. I also did a ton of her beautiful buttercream flowers. Of course, mine were not as delicate and polished as hers, but for being some of my first buttercream flowers, I was pretty please with them! I just really need to work on applying them to the side of my cake. Mine kept wanting to fall off the cake, so I had to smash them in! I’m sure this will improve with practice, however!

Linkie came by my station and said that I must have done a basketweave before, and she was pretty surprised when I told her that it was my very first time! This was a huge compliment to me! She came by several times and complimented my cake every time! I know she was probably just trying to be nice and encouraging, but it made me feel really good about my work!

All in all, today was the best day ever in advanced baking. I am so happy that we had to privilege of learning from Linkie. MUW really is a place that makes dreams a reality. I cannot imagine any other university where students could meet someone so talented and learn from them first hand! I hope that I can one day give back to MUW and the Culinary Arts Institute like Linkie does! She really is a role model.

I can’t wait to see what else is in store for advanced baking!

ABC.