Basic Buttercream Class

BASIC BUTTERCREAM CLASS


Hosted by Sharon Zambito and Wendy Baiamonte

December 12-13, 2010

Hammond, LA (40 minutes north of New Orleans)

Students will make Sharon's buttercream icing recipe, and learn to ice both round and square cakes perfectly smooth and sharp. Bonus items will be thrown is a time permits.

$275 includes the icing and light lunch. Students will need to bring cakes and tools.

Only 7 spots left.

Email szcakes@aol.com to register. Hope to see you there!

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Wish us luck as we shoot our next DVD this week! I will try to post some behind the scenes photos this week. I am also working on a gumpaste tulip tutorial, and have some class pictures to share with you guys as well within the next two weeks.

I hope that all of your caking dreams are coming true!

Sharon

Hangin' Ten in 2010!

Hey everybody! We are back!

We recently attended the 2010 ICES Convention in San Diego. What a great time we had seeing old friends, meeting new ones, and catching up on all the cool new things happening in the cake world.

It was too far for us to drive this year, so I had to ship all of our stock and my demo supplies ahead, and we all flew up there. (We being me, Wendy, my sisters Janice and Barbara, and my son D.)

Oh man the weather! We were in heaven as soon as we stepped out of the airport. Mild temps, low humidity and beautiful blue skies. So very different from where we live, where it is so hot and humid it is a chore to breathe.

Do you guys recall our adventurous trip last year? My sisters rode in the lap of luxury in the air and their limos, while Wendy, D and I drove a cargo van across the country through about 8 million miles of cornfields. Well, time for payback, sistahs.

Find yer own way to the hotel.

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Once we got to the hotel, we unloaded and stopped for a bite to eat. Here are Wendy and I in our Team Diet Coke shirts.

Our crew.

Barb, Janice, me, Wendy, and D in front of our booth.




Our vendor booth with all the stuff.

These are my two selling machines. They were tired from working so hard!

This is my little friend who loves cake decorating, and he is very talented. He came all the way from Canada with his mom to attend ICES. I wanted to take him home.

This is Diane, Connie and Michelle of the Cake Connection. They are very dear friends of ours, and we so look forward to seeing them whenever we can.

It was Connie's birthday, so we surprised her with a cupcake with a little ceramic squirrel on it. Connie has serious squirrel issues, hence her horrified face. I love the expression on Diane's face in this one.

She won't go near the squirrel. LOL

One evening the SugarEd crew went out for a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant. It was utterly wonderful in ambiance, food and company.

My beautiful Wendy.

The Cherry Hog wanted the cherry from my drink, but she wasn't getting it.

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And here are some of the amazing cakes that were on display in the cake room. The talent on display was amazing.

If you ever get the chance to attend an ICES convention, I highly recommend it. It is a weekend of fun filled with demos, classes, displays, shopping and friendship.

Happy caking!

Sharon

SALE at the CONFECTION COLLECTION!

‎20% OFF ENTIRE ORDER!

at CONFECTION COLLECTION and Handbags by Christian Marie!

Coupon code: 20SALE

ORDER HERE

Go now! You know you want too!

Sale ends tomorrow, (I think) :)

Bronwen Weber Class

SugarEd Productions Presents


Famed sugar artist Bronwen Weber

Monday and Tuesday, September 13 - 14, 2010

Kenner , Louisiana (near New Orleans)

Two Stack Jack O' Lantern Cake

$415 All supplies included

Bring your own lunch

Spaces are limited so reserve your spot now. Payments are due in full and non-refundable.

Please email me at szcakes@aol.com to register.

Hope to see you there!

Sharon

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PS. I know I promised you guys photos of my 25th anniversary cake and party. But I just got word that Cake Central Magazine is going to use photos of the cake in the next issue, so I cannot post those until after that issue is released. I am going to wait until that time, so I can make one big post and show you all the juicy details at one time. Thanks for asking about it!

Contest Winners!

Hi everyone!

WOW! What a great response we had to this contest! Thank you all for entering!

By random draw the 6 winners are:

carlakb said...

I can remember the 1st cake I made for my mom becoming a pastor and I proudly brought it to her Church for her celebration; I think I might have embarrassed her w/it? It was a dark purple, didn't know how to pipe yet or smooth my icing, but I really tried. Lol

Julie said...

Wow! You have come a long way! Such an inspiration to all of us novices!

Jenny said...

How fun! It proves that all anyone needs is practice and more practice. I love your cakes and videos. Thank you for sharing!!

aneal said...

Thank you so much for sharing your beginnings with us. I can recall my first class, better yet I can recall the first cake I tried to frost. It was from my Easy Bake Oven.
I love, love, love, your icing. Thanks for taking all the time (years) and perfecting it for us.

courtneyscakes said...

I love the old pictures!! It shows just how far cake decorating has come. I still laugh at my first cakes too and they're only from 3 years ago!! Thanks for posting.

Jen H said...

I can't tell you how much better your post made me feel about my cake decorating progress. Everyone has to start somewhere. It's great to see how someone I admire as a decorator has grown. It gives me hope!

Congratulations to you all and please email me at sugaredinfo@aol.com to claim your prize!

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And if those previous photos were not entertaining enough, I found even a few more. These are a little bit further down the road in my decorating career. You can see that I got bolder and braver as time went on! :)

This was done for my son during my star tip phase. I was too scared to try to ice it smooth, so I obviously thought this was a good idea at the time. Look at the left hand side of Pikachu; you can see the rows of stars. I failed to randomize the rows, LOL. This was the first time I transferred an image onto a cake. I took the image to Kinkos and had them blow it up to this size. I cut it out, and laid all the pieces on the icing to make an impression outline to follow. I thought I was hot stuff, and I do recall all of my neighborhood moms making over how great this cake was! HAHA!

Nothing was safe during my star tip phase. If it wasn't moving, I covered it with stars. I am pretty sure I did this one with canned icing too. Might have been Wilton canned buttercream.

This was my first or second fondant cake. I saw a fondant cake in a magazine and knew I wanted to master that. I bought a box of Wilton fondant, read the directions on the back, and went for it. I used a contoured pan (easier to cover), no filling. Sadly piped royal icing lace points and silk flowers. Plastic Wilton turntable. I was on fire!

This was when I discovered colorflow. I guess I wanted to see how many royal icing things on sucker sticks I could jam into one cake without destroying it. Please help me.

OK

SIT DOWN

READY?

This has got to be the worst cake of all time. Canned Betty Crocker frosting tinted puke green. Crappy borders and plastic plants! Yes folks, plastic ivy from the craft store! What in heck's name was I thinking? This was for my hubby's BD, for a family gathering, and I distinctly remember bursting with pride over this one. Somebody pray for me.

Well folks, that is all the old photos I have for now. I enjoyed sharing this trip down memory lane with you all!

Next week we will be at the ICES convention in CA. Please stop by my booth to say hello if you are there!

Happy Caking!

Sharon

In The Beginning....

Hello everyone! How is your summer going? Mine has been busy as heck and it is flying by.

And since it's hot as Hades down here where I live, I took the opportunity to stay in the A/C and did some deep de-cluttering of my house.

While going through boxes, I found these very old photos of cakes I made about 23 years ago , at the time of my first classes. What a fun surprise to have found them, and to look back at the old days!

These are the actual class cakes. My brother Michael took the class with me. He is such a cool guy. You have met him before here and here. I think mine are the two on the right. The class was given at a local cake supply shop, and would be the equivalent of Wilton 1 and 2 , I would guess.

A sheet cake I did shortly after. The flower basket is made like those panoramic eggs with a mold and granulated sugar. I think that started my infatuation with molds.

Proof that at one time I could make a buttercream rose that was halfway decent.

Ah, my famous rough icing that I use when I do not want to bother with smoothing the cake. Freehand writing could use a little work, LOL.

I remember bringing this baby shower cake to work at the hospital where I worked at the time. All plastic decorations..... haha

A baby rattle......

Notice that you can see the cake through the icing. I had not perfected my icing technique yet. :)

I seem to have been fascinated by plastic decorations. Tried my hand at block writing since my script left something to be desired.

It tickles me to look back and see how my skills have progressed. There are a lot of good memories tied to these cakes as well, as I did them all for friends and family.

Do you guys have old cake pictures you look at from time to time?

To celebrate all of our humble beginnings, and because it has been way too long.......

TIME FOR A GIVE-AWAY!

Everyone who posts a comment below will be entered into a drawing for fabulous prizes:

Wedding Bouquet Flavoring (5 bottles will be given away)

and a beautiful item from the CONFECTION COLLECTION!

Winners will be announced next week, so enter now!

Good luck!

Sharon

Back to Basics DVD

The new Back to Basics: Baking for Cake Decorating DVD is at the presses and we anticipate to start shipping in about two weeks!

UPDATE: Things are moving faster then we expected and we MAY be shipping next week!

You can read more about it, watch a video clip,

and place your order HERE

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I am very busy with preperations for and making a huge cake for the 25th anniversary party hubby and I are throwing for ourselves. Hey, no one else is going to do it!

I will post lots of pictures and give you all the inside scoop next week.

Have a great weekend!

Sharon