Wilton Method of Decorating Cakes: Session ONE

I went to the first session of my cake decorating class this past Monday.

My take on the class was that it was slightly boring/disappointing, although I did learn a lot of information that I didn't know before about how to bake a cake, and the differences between icing consistencies (like if you want to write letters with the icing, you need a softer consistency and if you want to make petals or something like that, you want a firmer consistency). 

Towards the middle of class, we learned how to prepare the icing bags and the different tips you can use to make different designs. She also went over how to hold the bag and different hand positions to use when you make different designs. 

And at the end of class came the fun part! We got to practice decorating sugar cookies that we were all supposed to bring with us to class. 

The different techniques we learned in session 1 were stars and dots. I think that my stars are pretty good (they are not very hard), but my dots could use a little bit of work. It's hard to get them smooth on the top and still look like a dot. 

I am looking forward to the second class because we were all given homework to bring a cake with us next time to practice on! We are also supposed to prepare our own icing to use. We are going to practice cutting the cake in to two layers to put a tasty filling in between the layers. 

We each got course booklets to review, and there is a recipe for icing in there that we're supposed to use. However, it calls for vegetable shortening (Crisco) and I refuse to use that. Hello, the name of the recipe is Butter cream Icing. Last time I checked, Crisco isn't butter. 

So I will be modifying the recipe. It tastes better if you use real butter anyway. For the first class, we used the Wilton brand ready to use icing. I had never used Wilton brand icing before, and I do not like how it tastes.

I asked the instructor if that would be alright to use butter instead, and she said that it would be fine but I may need to add extra sugar to make it the right consistency.

Whatever, more sugar is like my middle name.