Cake Decorating Class – 1st week

On my 101 for 1001 list I included a goal of attending a cake decorating class, and since my college roommate follows my blog (hi J!), she told me about a month ago she was going to take a Wilton class at Michael’s.  Of course I was excited to sign up!  Their first course in the series of three, Decorating Basics,  is not too expensive at Michael’s (it was $22.50  total for 4 weeks), though you do have to buy materials and things that are not included in the beginner’s kit (about $22 if you use a 40% off coupon) for each week.  Overall, I think I will spend about $100 total for materials needed for 4 weeks of classes, including the cost of the course and the beginner’s kit.

I will just start off saying that I have NO practice baking or decorating cakes.  I have made simple cupcakes and muffins before and that’s about the extent of my “cake” baking experience.  Luckily the Wilton’s Decorating Basics course is meant for people like me :)

The first class we went over a lot of basics, like how to properly bake a cake, the materials you will need to bake and decorate correctly, some tips and tricks, etc.  We also learned how to make the classic buttercream icing.  To be honest, this frosting is just a bit too sweet for me so I’m not sure if I will use it in the future when I decorate cakes for my own personal use.  I think I’m going to research some recipes that use cream cheese or not as sugar.  

We decorated cookies the first class, but I didn’t take any pictures as they were fairly simple.  We did a lot of stars during this class, which is a design technique I can actually handle and am pretty good at! 

Since I don’t have any pictures from the first week, the one above is from my horrible cake I made for the 2nd class, but I will share more of that next time :)