*For cake decorating class.

This was supposed to be a panoramic egg. Our teacher had recommended that we buy an egg mold to cover in royal icing. Victor picked up an egg mold pan (it’s like a cupcake pan with 12 little egg molds) for me that we thought would work, but….I couldn’t use it. I needed to be able to cover the outside of the egg mold with wax paper and then pipe the royal icing over that. When the icing is dry, the wax paper is carefully removed. With my egg mold pan, I wasn’t able to secure the wax paper to the egg. One of the only other things I had with me at class was a breakfast bowl. So, I covered that with wax paper and started piping a zig-zag pattern using tip 22.

This was the first time I worked with royal icing. It is quite temperamental. No hint of plastic can touch the icing without making it breakdown. I always work with reusable pastry bags which seem to be a cross between canvas and plastic. For royal icing, it is better to use a parchment paper, however, it is pretty hard (for me anyway) to create a pastry bag from parchment. Also, the coupler is plastic, etc, etc. Our teacher had warned us about how easily royal icing breaks down, so I was well prepared for widespread failure. It was actually going pretty well during class; I just needed to get it home to dry. I covered it with my handy cake caddy (ah…plastic…whoops) and headed home. In the short 10 minute, drive, the evils of plastic had destroyed my sweet Easter basket/bowl!

Since this project was scheduled for both the current and the next week, I needed something to take back to class with me the following Monday…so I made a new batch of royal icing and started all over again. This time, since I didn’t have to do any transport, I was able to let the basket dry completely. I think it turned out rather well. The bunnies chicks and roses are also made of royal icing. The following week at class we assembled the stuff (basket in my case, eggs for the others in the class), added the grass and put in the roses, bunnies and chicks. This was a lot of work, I was really proud of how it turned out.