Felted Pillow + Decorating Cakes Part III

This weekend was wonderfully uneventful!  I woke up on Saturday with the idea of finally finishing my wool pillow.  After taking care of some chores around the house, I took out my project and steadily worked with the embroidery floss until it was where I wanted the design to be.  I wanted lots of colors to keep it fun yet simple.  With the embroidery done, it was time to use the sewing machine and then stuff the pillow.  My oldest daughter  loved watching me sew and even helped stuff the pillow with “snow”.  Here is the final result…

It’s funny to think that this started off as an old Gap sweater!  I look forward to trying other projects with felted wool.  Let me know if you have any suggestions.

On Saturday night, I began preparations for my cake decorating class.  I baked the cake, made icing for the cake, and then our new instruction was to make royal icing.  What is royal icing, I wondered?  Many cake decorators use royal icing for the decorations themselves – especially for making flowers.  The mixture is thick and once you have made your flower, it dries hard.  This type of icing holds up in warm weather and generally won’t sag.   Technically it’s eatable, however I wouldn’t recommend it as I think it tastes awful (not to mention it would be very crunchy)!

We used the royal icing in class to practice making one type of rose.  I must have made 30 of them!  I really wanted to learn this technique because I feel this is the base for all other flowers.  Here is how it turned out…

Even though the next session of classes doesn’t start for a few weeks, I want to continue practicing and hope to bake more cakes.

P.S. – Half of this cake is already gone!  I made some changes to the icing and cake recipe and I think I’m getting much closer to what I’m looking for.  This round I used less sugar in the icing recipe and replaced the vegetable oil in the cake for applesauce – yes applesauce.  I’ve heard about this trick but never tried it until now.  My family and I think it tastes much better!

Images:  House of Many Hues