Cake decorating

A couple of months ago I hosted an Enrichment at my house. My sister-in-law Dawn, who is a pastry chef and attended Scottsdale culinary school graciously agreed to come and share her talents with many of us. I have been asked several times to do a blog post about it for those who wanted to come and couldn't make it. I loved the approach she took, she did simple things that anyone could do. We only had an hour and I got a lot of great ideas. She often works with fondant and her cakes take hours and hours to make. Click here to see her blog, she has a slideshow on the side of some of her cakes, she is awesome.

Here are some of the things she showed us: (this class was before Easter, so a lot of ideas are springy)
A marshmallow bunny with edible Easter grass, a flower she made with scrapbook paper and a couple different sizes of flower punches stuck to a toothpick with a brad in the center. She make the "leaves" with green ribbon stuck through a bobby pin (yes, a bobby pin). The third one is a vintage postcard she printed for free and mounted on cardstock and the last is a fortune cookie she dipped in chocolate and sprinkled for St. Patricks day.How cute and easy, suckers tied with a ribbon! She also did this with cute suckers shaped like flowers.
Slice a strawberry and fan it out, a pinwheel made with scrapbook paper (click here for a pattern) and the bunny is a foam sticker, how simple and inexpensive, yet so very cute.
These are the three cakes she decorated. The bunny and flowers are made of chocolate. For the bunny, she took a cookie cutter, put it on wax paper and filled it with white melting chololate. To make the cute flowers, use colored chocolate and usuing a squeeze bottle with a small tip, trace flowers from anything (she used a cute scrapbook paper with those shapes) . Place the coloring book page or scrapbook paper on the counter, then put wax paper over it and trace with the chocolate, let it set and stick it in the cake. (That is my very favorite one)
The middle one is a cake with buttercream, ganache poured over it and topped with lots of berries, some covered in chocolate. She then took pieces of ribbon through a bobby pin and stuck them randomly in between berries. The final one is simply flowers and ribbon through bobby pins stuck to the top.

See how easy and yet how cute? Anyone can do these. Thank you Dawns for the fabulous ideas and all your hard work and time you put into teaching this.