A Guest Blog from Amanda Eising of Cake Delish

I am in Cake Decorator Heaven! 6 days ago I left my beautiful little country town in Central Queensland to soak up the amazing talent of Planet Cake and complete my Masters in cake decorating … and I’m bringing you all along for the ride. I will be completing the final 4 cakes in the series while I’m here, making me only the 10th person have ever completed the Masters series… and blogging all about it along the way!




But firstly, I have to admit…since I got here I have been nothing but star struck!



Aside from the usual talent you find walking the Planet Cake halls, day 1 began with me walking into the room and discovering that I’d be working alongside my long time idol Greg Cleary of Sweetums Designer Cakes! I did my best – failing spectacularly – to contain my excitement, but to have the opportunity to work alongside Greg during my first course was a major bonus to say the least.



Add to this the uber talented Jaqueline Butler from Petalsweet Cakes in America teaching in the next room, and I was finding it rather difficult to concentrate! But concentrate I must, as I was about to embark on the most challenging cake I’ve ever faced… the tapered vase cake.



This gravity defying cake presented a huge challenge. If we thought setting up, ganaching and carving the cake was difficult, day 2 – covering - was about to make our little minds implode. Under the experienced guidance of Anna Maria we all took a deep breath and dove into the challenge with gusto. Fast forward a few hours (and not as many tears as you might expect), we were all looking rather chuffed to have conquered the covering of that vase.



Once you reach the higher level courses with Planet Cake you are encouraged to create your own designs and day 3 had the room filling with ‘oooohs’ and ‘ahhhhs’ as we all saw each others creations coming together. There was lots of airbrushing, painting, flower assembling and lilly pad making …. meanwhile, I was piping, piping, piping.. oh, and did I mention piping?? It’s a skill I like to practice while learning under Anna Maria as she is the Piping Queen (in my opinion) and to be honest… piping scares me! But several hours and even more hand cramps later, I was done.



The end result was a class filled with AMAZING cakes that were by Anna Maria’s admission, some of the most creative vase cakes she’d seen. We won’t disagree!



I won’t be able to take any of my cakes home with me so I have decided to donate them all - my vase cake went to the South Coogee School to be auctioned off to raised money for their library – I hope it raised heaps!



Stay tuned for my next cake – the Tapered Square and Spheres Cake. Today was day 1 and just wait till you see the amazing designs everyone has come up with for this cake… it’s worth the wait!