Last night I played with 12 Cadette scouts (12-13yo). We crumb-coated, then iced 4" cakes, smoothed with Viva, made fondant Duff roses and ribbon roses, then just played. It was wonderful! Some of those girls did a really good job.

Things learned:
I had baked sheet cakes, then froze and cut 4" circles. So far so good. But... esp with beginners, way too crumbly when icing. If I do this again, it is probably worth getting a second pan, and just having a marathon of baking. I would have to borrow a freezer!

Viva is wonderful! There was one little cake that was quite sad. I asked the young lady if I could use it to show smoothing, and by golly, other that the crumbs in the icing, it smoothed up quite nicely! She was thrilled.

EVERY ONE of the girls knows Cake Boss! "Dirty icing" and the proper pronunciation of "fondant" were some of the topics discussed.

I always overplan! We never got to BC border, but nobody cared. We had all sorts of fondant borders- ropes, balls, etc.

Make lots more icing than you think you will need. Because of the crumbs, we had to throw out a lot after crumbcoating.

I hope to do more of this!

I have done this with 20 5th graders and it was a blast too! Something I did that was effective was I sat at a table with a bag of icing and a big icer tip and put the icing on the cake and ran around it with my offset spatula (very quickly), then each child took their cake and sat down waiting for further instructions (and for it to crust)...then we just started with instructions on doing the viva method (I brought 3 different patterns of paper towels and plain viva ones) they had sooooooooo much fun, and I too was shocked at how good some of these kids were.

Awwwww sounds like a great time! You bring back wonderful memories for me. I was a girl scout leader for 15 years. (And a girl scout myself for 8 years).
Some of my best memories are with my troop.
Its a great organazation for girls.
I can't wait for my grandaughter (who is 3yr) to join when she's five.
Do you have any pics to share? I would love to see them. You could pm me if you would like.

Sounds great! Did you know that Wilton has an Icing fun "class" that you can do with Girl Scouts? Go to their website and click on classes for details. Thanks to my fellow CC'ers for the details. Plus, they make a patch for the girls, my scouts are in 5th grade and still love the patches. I am ordering the kits and we will be doing this at our next troop meeting.