Spring time in Winter

After much arm twisting and strong suggestions, I finally agreed to (thank goodness!!!) tag along with my bestest buddy in the world to yet another interstate cake course this year.

This was a 2.5 day advanced sugar flowres course at Planet Cake. The teacher non other than the wonderful and super talented Greg Cleary of Sweetums. The man is the GOD OF SUGARFLOWERS. Man he's good!!!!

We left Melbourne in the wee hours of the morning of Friday 10th of July. It was freezing cold here in Melbourne. It was dark when we arrived at the airport, but by the time our flight took off the sun was shining. We arrived in Sydney at around 9.00am (I think that was the time). The sun welcomed us, and it was lovely and warm. I sat in the taxi, with the full sun on me, fealing like a happy fat seal lying on the beach.

Fran brought her own fruit cakes to the class, covered in marzipan. The cake is destined as a present for her friend, whose birthday is at the end of August. The things weighed a ton, but I couldn’t help her out, because I was struggling with my bag which weighed a little under a ton. Lucky for Fran her wonderful hubby, who works in Sydney during the week, took her clothes up with him and left them at the concierge for her to pick up when we checked in. Because of this she was able to fly with no luggage.

First day at PC, we filled and covered our cakes with ganache. The cake looked nice, it was a three colour marble mudcake.

After ganaching we made the centers for our tulips, all the parts for the lily of the valley, the sweet peas, and some buds. We also covered our boards with fondant and added the ribbon trim.

Class finished at around 4.00pm, but Fran and I stayed back gas bagging with Greg, Anna Maria (AKA Madhatter Queen) and Paris (owner of PC), until about 5.00pm.

We arranged to meet Greg afterwards for dinner. We went back to our hotel, and bummed around for a bit. Greg came to meet us at our hotel in the city at around 7.30, and we just walked down the street to an Italian restaurant (La Bora) that David (Fran's hubby) had recommended. We had a very delicious dinner, and great conversation, although Fran had lost 85% of her voice, and the place was packed to the rafters, and very bloody noisy!!! It was a wonderful night, and Greg had us mesmerized with his wonderful stories. The staff at the restaurant though, were very bizzarre and made the characters from the Rocky Horror Picture Show seem tame and normal ;)

We got to sleep at around 11.30pm, woke up at 8.00am so that we could go and have brekkie at the hotel cafe before class. For some unknown reason, i was absolutely starving and had to have a full breakfast of eggs, toast and hash browns. Hmmmm Brekkie was yummy!!

We got to class and Greg had bought us a lovely treat. The night before he had been telling us about a place that he walked past every day on the way to Planet Cake, that had beautiful pastries. He bought us a delicious Lime and Almond tart, OMG, it was devine!!!

During our class we covered our cakes, and did all the petals for our flowers. We finished class at around 5.00pm on Saturday. It was a very busy day!!!

Back to the hotel again, to have a very quick shower and to get ready to go and see the Phantom of The Opera OMG can a girl have a better friend than Fran??? Nope I really really doubt it!!! She bought the tickets, so that I could go and see my very first musical. AND MAN!!! It was soooo wonderful, I was just in awe of it all. I loved it, loved it, LOVED IT!!!! Anthony Warlow is fabulous, and Alexander Lewis is gorgeous!!!

After the show, we went straight back to our hotel, we were very very tired, and tried to get to sleep ASAP because we had agreed with Greg that we would go into class at 8.00pm to get an early start on our cakes, we needed to be packed and checked out of the hotel by 7.00am.

Unfortunately, there was very loud music coming from a pub downstairs, and we couldn't get to sleep. We got into silly giggles, and I was having stupid laughing attacks over the silliest things. It was fun, but we didn’t fall asleep till waaaaay past midnight!!!!

It was very hard to get up at 6.00am, but we had no choice. Brekkie got us going a bit, and off to class again. We were lucky and managed to finish in time to head off to the airport at 1.15pm. We missed out on the group photo though.I was sooooo absolutely gobsmacked with my cake, I just could not stop staring at it. I just love it that much!!!

Greg is such a wonderful teacher. He wrote fantastic notes for us, and taught us so many great tricks. The fact that he was a florist and he has such a love for flowers really shows in his work, and his beautiful flower placement. Flower placement was something that I had no clue about before this class. I feel so privileged to know him.

Fran left her cake in Sydney to be shipped by courier, but because my cake was not destined for any particular event, I decided to just check it in as fragile luggage.

The flight was pleasant, but arriving into Melbourne, there was a lot of wind, and it was a bumpy sort of landing, quite scary really, but the pilotess got us home safe :)

Hubby, David(Fran's hubby) and D'arcy were all waiting for us at the airport. It was great to see them all.

My cake arrived in perfect condition. wooohooo!!!!
I would certainly do another class with Greg Cleary, at the drop of a hat!! No doubt about it.