For our 2nd cake in course 1 the book shows both the Clown cake, pink flowered cake as well as cupcakes. Did your instructure give you an option on which one you wanted to do in class? Our instructure is referring us to the clown cake which I don't really like :/ And in planning for the final cake which one of the 3 cakes in the final lesson did you do?
Thanks!
Newbie from TN!
My class did the clown cake too. It was kind of fun though. Clowns kept falling over and the such. My final cake was the one on page 34, roses in the center, dots, and drop flowers around the bottom boarder.
My instructor allowed us to decide what cake we wanted to make for all three weeks in course one. I made the cupcakes on the second last week so I could practice all the techniques I learned on an actual cake surface. I also do not like clowns 
For the last cake I made the one with the roses in the centre and dots on the side.
I am not creative so I enjoyed seeing the different cakes everyone in my class made.
My class did the clown cake as well. And, for our final, we could choose which one we wanted to do, but we had to have like 5 or 6 roses on it. We ended up all (there were only 3 students) doing the same one. I think it's the same one "newtodecorating" mentioned. It was basically a mound of icing on top of a layered cake with roses on it and some dots and a shell border I think at the bottom. The clown cake wasn't as bad as I thought - it was kinda fun. My clowns fell over before I made it home (an hour away) even with the toothpicks down the center of them. Oh, well! Maybe you should talk to your instructor and tell her your interested in doing something different than the clowns. You can still learn how to do the clowns without putting them on the cake. HTH!
Steph
Our teacher pretty much let us choose to bring a round cake or cupcakes iced and we could decorate them with clowns or figure piped animals. I brought cupcakes and made little animals on top, I'm not a fan of clowns.
For the final cake we had to make I think 6 roses, but she didn't make us put them all on the cake if we didn't want to. Our instructor pretty much let us design our own cakes once we got to the decorating part of class. WE had to learn all the techniques, but then she let us decorate with whatever techniches we waanted to out of what we learned.
Here are pics of the cupcakes I did and the final cake I did in course1
She said the reason she wanted us all to do the clown cake was because it would give us a better hand at figure piping.
But if I can figure pipe on the cupcakes Im not sure the difference?
Thanks for posting your pix for me 
The cupcakes turned out cute and the choclate cake looks sooo yummy. We haven't been taught how to make the choclate BC icing thou.
My Instructor always told us to do whatever we wanted! So We had pretty much free reign.
The chocolate buttercream variation should be in your course book where the recipe is listed. It's just an addition of cocoa powder or melted chocoalte to teh regular buttercream recipe.
Quote by @%username% on %date%
%body%