Wilton Flowers and Cake Design

Last week I completed course 2 of the Wilton courses at Michaels - Flowers and Cake Design. Since one of the main reasons I started taking these courses was to learn how to do roses and flowers, I decided that my final project cake would have roses on it! My final cake for course 1 had roses too but they were different. We learned how to do the basket weave design on the side of the cake during the last class. We brought our cakes ready to decorate. My cake was a strawberry cake the same recipe that I used in the Neapolitan cake from a previous post. The strawberry cake recipe is from Allrecipes.com and can be found here.

2 cups white sugar
1 (3 ounce) package strawberry flavored
gelatin
1 cup butter, softened
4 eggs (room temperature)
2 3/4 cups sifted cake flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup whole milk, room temperature
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup strawberry puree made from
frozen sweetened strawberries
DIRECTIONS:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour two 9 inch round cake pans.
In a large bowl, cream together the butter, sugar and dry strawberry gelatin until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time, mixing well after each. Combine the flour and baking powder; stir into the batter alternately with the milk. Blend in vanilla and strawberry puree. Divide the batter evenly between the prepared pans.
Bake for 25 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a small knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Allow cakes to cool in their pans over a wire rack for at least 10 minutes, before tapping out to cool completely.
I filled the cake with strawberry buttercream which was made with butter and a small amount of shortening, powdered sugar, vanilla, LorAnn strawberry flavoring and fresh pureed strawberries.
The frosting on the outside of the cake was Wilton class frosting - with a bit of real butter - class frosting is usually made with white shortening only but I really don't care for it and find if using Crisco, the frosting doesn't crust well so I used a small amount of real butter and flavored it with Wilton clear artificial vanilla.
Now I have completed 2 out of 4 Wilton Method Courses and tonight I begin #3 which is Gum Paste and Fondant. Gotta say, I'm a little intimidated but I'll give it my best try.
Another look at my final cake....