Flowers & Cake Design (Part 1)

Well, I started my final Wilton class this past Monday. I'm a quarter of the way done with flowers & cake design and I'm actually really excited for this class. There's a lot of flowers that we'll be doing out of buttercream (or royal icing), and I never really got the hang of the piped flowers when I tried to teach myself. Hopefully I'll be a faster learner with an instructor who's going over the step by step instructions with me.

 This is the pansy that we made. I think this is actually upside down, but I don't really know. I like pansies a lot in real life (my grandma always plants tons of them) but I'm kind of iffy about this gumpaste one. First of all, the gumpaste started to harden and crack before I finished ruffling the petals, so that was a total buzzkill. I also feel like the sizing of the flower is off.



My biggest complaint about this class is that there is a lot of redundancy when you take the Flowers class and the Fondant class (weren't they supposed to fix that?). You even get a lot of the same tools. I'm quite miffed about that; I'd rather get some new tools that Wilton suggests you buy, but they don't actually put in your kit, like the 9" rolling pin or the tapered spatula.



You also have to re-learn a lot of the same skills: how to tint gumpaste, how to make gum-glue, etc. So totally boring if you've taken the gumpaste class already.



And the button flower? I've got mixed feelings about this guy. First of all: SUPER CUTE. I can't wait to use it with this mold for a cake I've been wanting to make for Katie for a couple of years now. But the way the flower cutter is set up is SUCH A PAIN. Also, I don't understand why you don't make this flower in the fondant/gumpaste class either. If anyone can figure that out for met, let me know!

Anyone else taken this class? Did you like it? Was it hard to make the "Wilton rose?" (I really hope I can finally master that elusive flower!)