Rustic Shamrock Cake

Monday night I went to my first cake decorating class. It was nothing like I expected it to be, but I still learned some useful things. The first thing I learned was to make a wall of frosting when doing the filling, this worked great when I made the Shamrock cake yesterday. I also learned that our local grocery store sells undecorated cake rounds- great for emergencies!



Unfortunately I didn't learn much more. The teacher spent most of the class talking about her business, which while interesting, didn't help me with any cake decorating techniques. While she made frosting and decorated a cake with stars/polka dots, she did it in a manner that the students couldn't really see. I still felt inspired to bake a cake yesterday... and let's just say, 'rustic' is an understatement.



I used the recipe for frosting found in our class booklet and it was SO thick I had a hard time frosting the cake, which is why it looks so uneven. It also didn't yield enough to cover the entire cake- thus the crumbs here and there. I didn't have enough to do a crumb coating. I wish the teacher had explained a bit more about the techniques she used. I might just got back to my usual recipe which works great!

For now I will try to remain positive regarding the next few classes and be glad that at least my cake tasted awesome! I'm actually pretty proud of my improvised shamrock and little stars!

Proudly linking up to:

Shamrock Potato Stamps

Although my undergraduate degree is in Business, I taught pre-school for a while after getting laid off from my consulting job right after 9/11. I liked teaching so much that I decided to get a masters in Teaching & Learning once I returned to the business world. I haven't formally gotten the chance to use my second degree although I feel like I use it as a stay at home mom on a daily basis. However, you do not need a Masters in Teaching and Learning for potato stamps.

Cut a potato in half and chose the shape you want for your stamp. In this case I printed off an shamrock and then carefully cut around with a knife.



Place the stamps on a disposable plate with some washable paint.




Instruct the kids to dip in the paint and stamp away.

My son (almost 2 yrs old) did well with the dipping part, but then did more of a drag than a stamp on the paper.

My daughter (4 yrs old) however did awesome with the stamping part.

For us this craft was more about the process than the product. We talked about the shape of the shamrock, the color green, etc. Just this morning my daughter asked if we could cut out the shamrocks and string them along some green yarn to decorate their kitchen. I think we'll do that tomorrow!

I'm linking up this craft to the following parties: