Great Escape: Sugar Rush

For my daughter's fourth birthday she wanted a princess cake that was pictured in a parenting magazine. The cake was labeled "easy" and it was basically two stacked, square cakes and four upside down sugar cones to look like spires on the castle. You simply frost it with pink icing and decorate with a few little candies. Perfect, I thought; I can totally do this!

After hours, however, of baking and stacking crumbling, broken cakes on top of each other, the cake was nothing short of disaster. I covered the whole cake in about 4 cans of frosting and then I decided to cover it all up with "My Little Pony" figurines from the toy box. The kids didn't care because it was a cake with ponies on it and massive amounts of frosting and candy, but truly, the cake looked awful.

Now, my same daughter loves to watch "Cake Boss" and "Top Chef" and they make incredible works of art in under an hour. Feeling inspired by the shows, I decide to take a class and learn some cake decorating basics.

Jane's Cake and Chocolate Supply is a cake and candy lover's paradise. The courtyard outside the store is almost like a little sanctuary with a babbling fountain and beautiful tables with market umbrellas. When I walked through the door, I was overwhelmed by countless varieties of chocolate barks, milk chocolate turtles, and other chocolate medallions. Jane's Chocolate and Cake Supply even boasts a delicious chocolate-covered twinkie.

A whole section of the store is dedicated exclusively to candy-making. Chocolates in every color are available to go inside several hundred different candy-making molds; choose from holiday, sports, wedding and many more themes. Candy demonstrations are held on the first and third Saturday of every month.

There is yet another room that is dedicated to cake-making. Inside, you'll find an impressive variety of Wilton cake molds, Bundt pans, cupcake molds, frostings and sparkles. It was amazing! Right now, in celebration of spring, they have a whole display of three-dimensional bunny cakes. There are four levels of classes to choose from: "Intro to Cake Decorating," "Intermediate Cake Decorating," "Advanced," and "Fondant Cake Decorating." Each class is five weeks long and costs $80. Jane's also offers cake and cupcake decorating parties for children or adults.

The cake decorating classes are easy, informative, fun, and horribly messy; the best part is, the mess is their kitchen, not yours!  Tom, the owner, teaches the classes and gives all kinds of tips and tricks of the trade. All the supplies and ingredients you'll need are in right there in the store; it's all so simple! I am proud to say I have now decorated a couple of my own cakes, and though they are nowhere near "cake boss" caliber, they still look good and taste great!