My First baking class 101

Recently I had the pleasure of hosting a baking class in my home.  I have had several friends ask how I do some of the baking and decorating I do.  I figured gathering them all together would be a good way to answer everyone's questions all at once and have a good time too.  We did have a good time, but I'm pretty sure I didn't answer everyone's questions or even come close to teaching them everything I wanted to.  I learned very quickly that four hours is not long enough to teach baking and decorating basics to one person let alone 8 people all crammed into my kitchen.  I still feel like it was a success though and I would do it again in a heartbeat.  Here are some pictures of our shenanigans.  

There was lots of baking going on. We started with cupcakes, vanilla and chocolate.   It took a little bit longer than I expected to make and bake all 5 dozen cupcakes so next time I will probably either prebake everything or have everyone bring their own.  

Then on to buttercream, lots and lots of it. 

Just a pinch of salt is all it takes for super duper buttercream. Yes this is me looking way to serious to be baking.  Everyone got their own teeny tiny square cake that I made ahead of time.  So it would be cooled and ready to frost. Why I didn't have everyone bake their own cake and bring it I'm not really sure?  

Then everyone chose a color and went to work coloring their frosting.  

Such a lovely shade a pink don't ya think. 

Everyone got to experience the wonders of gel food coloring and how potent it is.  

We went on to frost our cakes and practice a few simple techniques and then we moved on to cupcakes.  The cakes came out beautifully but my favorite were the cupcakes.  I wish I could say I meant for them to do this two tone technique but it really happened on accident.  The frosting was running low so I just replenished everyone's bags with white and voila these beautiful cupcakes appeared.  No really we meant to do that. 

After it was all finished my kitchen had a layer of frosting and cake crumbs all over it but it was such a wonderful experience that I hope to do it again and again.  Here is my favorite buttercream recipe.  

Sunny's Buttercream frosting recipe card