Best For Professionals: The Wilton School Of Cake Decorating And Confectionery Arts
The Wilton School of Cake Decorating and Confectionary Arts
Based in Illinois, The Wilton School of Cake Decorating and Confectionery Arts is a brick-and-mortar institution that has been teaching students how to make cakes and other desserts since 1929.
The Wilton Method has been coined to represent a specific set of techniques developed at the school that have since been adopted by generations of decorators worldwide. For those who cannot enroll in classes at the actual school, Wilton offers a variety of online tutorials and videos.
The Wilton Schools blog contains an archive of free, “how-to” cake decorating videos and articles covering tips and techniques for baking and cake decorating as well as recipes. Resources on the blog include Fondant Tips & Tricks, 9 Beginner Piping Techniques, How to Assemble and Ice a Cake, 10 Easy Buttercream Cake Decorating Techniques, Kid-Friendly Recipes and Projects, and more.
If you want to receive tips regularly, you can sign up for the newsletter, which sends free tips and technique videos directly to your inbox. The Wilton School’s website also sells bakeware, tools and accessories, ingredients, and display and storage supplies.
Learn The Art Of Cake Decorating And Baking And Use These Skills And Knowledge To Start Your Business With Our Cake Decorating And Baking Online Courses
The Cake Decorating and Baking Online Courses helps you master the fundamentals of business, from the logistics of setting up to creating a business plan, pricing your products and figuring out how best to market your delicious offerings. The purpose of this course is to give cake-makers a practical guide to creating a business. You will receive guidance through each area of setting up, running, and growing a successful cake-selling business.
The London Cake Academy Story
With so many wishing to learn the art of cake decorating due to the rise of the great TV shows like G.B.B.O. and Cake Boss. It became apparent that it was increasingly difficult to find any good cake decorating classes in Central London. Similarly, with so many of the greatest cake teachers and artists from all over the world requesting to come and teach cake decorating classes near me in London, I started commissioning the finest. As a result, we have since helped many students to a great start on the right road to great cakes.
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Best Structured Course: The Butter Book
The Butter Book
The website offers a variety of formal courses with instruction on everything from bread baking and French pastry to chocolate candies. One of the courses offered includes Cake Decorating and Icing. Within that category, you can select from a variety of lessons that range from beginner to advanced, including the basic Building & Icing a Buttercream Cake, Rolled Fondant essentials, and a variety of royal icing classes with intricate detail.
The Butter Book also offers a course on fundamentals for those just getting into baking and pastry. Designed in the more traditional course format, the site provides tips and terminology definitions throughout lessons, guidance on how to evaluate final products on taste, presentation and textures, as well as quizzes to check your understanding of skills.
Membership is required for access to online courses, but The Butter Book offers a free 10-day trial. Beyond that, the monthly fee is about $25 per month or $200 per year.
You Bring The Friends Well Supply The Fun
Not only do we sell the baking and decorating supplies you need to create an edible piece of art, but we also have a variety of classes to teach you new techniques.
For each of our decorating classes, we provide the supplies you need along with talented instructors who will walk you through step-by-step instructions to take your decorating skills to the next level. Just bring a few friends with you, and take home a fun creation plus new decorating skills that are all your own.
Find your nearest location that offers classes to see a class calendar of upcoming events!
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How To Make A Box Cake Taste Like Scratch
Ill let you in on a little secret, there are plenty of professional cake decorators out there who dont bake from scratch, they use a box mix and add ingredients to it to make it taste more like a scratch cake. This is called a doctored box mix and is quite tasty!
The most popular doctored cake mix is WASC which stands for White Almond Sour Cream Cake. But you dont have to use a white box mix, you can make the same adjustments to a yellow or funfetti box mix and it will taste just as good. If you want to use a chocolate box mix then check out the Chocolate WASC.
If you want to make your WASC into funfetti then add in 1/4 cup of jimmy sprinkles or confetti sprinkles. Mix into the batter at the very end of making the cake batter.
What Our Students Are Saying
I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to take this course. The instructors are incredible, a great resource, and really want you to succeed. I was able to work it around my schedule, and still take a couple of trips during the timeframe of the course, and be able to complete it on time. I spent a good deal of time on it during the week but I looked forward to that time every day and feel that this was the next best thing to actually attending the school in person.
It was a great course and I am super happy I did it! It feels like a great accomplishment. Thank you so much for everything. All the feedback, the recipes, the information, and the time. It has been a wonderful experience.
Rouxbe has online education dialed in, the course materials and videos are top-notch. The learning model is as good as it can get for a remote class model. I have also done the professional cook certification program and this course was just as well designed. I really enjoyed the entire experience.
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What You’ll Learn In This Fondant Class:
An intro to fondant, you’ll learn how to properly crumb coat a cake, and then cover it with fondant to get that smooth, professional looking finish. This class will also cover an overview of how to make different variations of bows to top your cake. At the end of the class, each student will have their very own bow cake to take home.
Tools and Skills Covered: Decorating techniques that will be covered in this class include crumb coating a cake, covering a cake in fondant, and creating a fondant bow and ribbon.Each student will be provided with a 5 cake that they will ice and decorate using fondant in the class. Students will create their own fondant covered bow cakes using the techniques that are covered within the class.The theme and style of the bows that will be taught within this course may vary depending on class date. Select a particular class date to see what cake will be created in that particular class.
Class Policies
Eggless Vanilla Cake And Cake Decorating Tips
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This is the picture of the first cake I decorated in Course 1 of Wilton’s Cake Decorating Courses. You can see that I need a lot of practice, but I’m sure that it will also give you the confidence that it’s easy and you can definitely do it.
I have been receiving a couple of mails since my earlier post on cake decoration, requesting me to update more information on how-to’s. The hardest part for me now is to give all the necessary information in an organized manner to the followers of this series. I feel that compiling this series is going to be difficult than actually taking the course and decorating the cakes.
I would say that the easiest thing to do is to enroll for the classes if it’s nearby your place and if you have the time for it. It’s a very nice experience. If not, check www.wilton.com. They have a lot of pictures, videos and tips etc. The only drawback is it’s a lot of information to take and without direction it’s difficult to follow. So I’ll provide some links here, following the course’s pattern. So it would be like you are taking an online class.
The Course 1 kit comes with a flower nail no.7, tip brush, standard couplers , decorator brush, featherweight decorating bags , disposable decorating bag , tips 3, 12, 16, 21, 104, 67 and 2D, a small straight spatula and a practice board set.
Check this video to know how to fill a decorating bag:
Watch the following video to see how to work with tip 16 to make stars
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Cake Piping Techniques From Wilton
Over at Wilton, youll have access to bunches of diferrent mini classes and instruction guides. Here, were featuring their list of piping techniques from learning how to pipe a shell to learning how to create the right amount of bag pressure. Theres also availability to learn about icing colors and more!
Best For Advanced Decorating Techniques: Cakeheads
Cakeheads
Why We Chose It: Shawna McGreevy was picked by Cake Masters as one of the top 10 cake artists in the United States, and she explains all her tips and tricks down to the tiny details on her elaborate cakes.
ProsGood mix of free and paid tutorialsFacebook group with over 1.3 million membersTutorials explore different techniquesConsSome might not like the videos’ casual approach
Cakeheads is the website by Shawna McGreevy, a self-proclaimed cake-making addict. Her enthusiasm shows with her stunning cakes and tutorials on her site. Expect a more casual approach to her videos, but the knowledge she imparts is 100 percent professional, with tips and instructions on how to make everything down to the small details.
With more than 1.3 million members in her Facebook group, theres also a robust community of cake decorators who love to share their work and knowledge. In fact, some of the tutorials on her site are made by her members, including how to make edible lace, how to make sugar poppies and vines, and how to model and make Frankensteins face. All these different perspectives mean Cakeheads is a great resource for learning advanced and different decorating techniques and tips on achieving stunning and showstopping cakes.
There are plenty of free tutorials on the website but most of them focus on details of the cake . If you want to learn how to make the entire cake and have access to the aforementioned Facebook group, its $20 per month or $180 per year.
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Best For Beginners: Sugar Geek Show
Sugar Geek Show
Why We Chose It: Sugar Geek Show beginning tutorials not only cover the basics but also extensively address common troubleshooting issues, so you can start with a great foundation before you move to the more advanced stuff.
ProsSpecific tutorials and videos for common issuesLots of free tutorials and blog postsSeven-day trial membershipConsOnly one instructor
Sugar Geek Show is the blog and online school of Liz Marek, a Cake Master-nominated website with over 200 cake-making and decorating tutorials. A former graphic designer, Marek accidentally started her cake career by making cakes for her friends and family, and through word of mouth, her efforts turned into a business. After writing a successful cake decorating book, she and her husband started up Sugar Geek Show and closed down their bakery to focus on teaching.
Sugar Geek Show has tons of free recipes for cakes on Marek’s blog, as well as great tutorials on sculptural cakes in the paid section, but what makes it stand out even more are the troubleshooting and cake basics tutorials. Focusing on the fundamentals of cake making and decorating, Marek helps guide you through common issues that occur like creating airless space buttercream, leveling cakes, and how to stack cakes. There are even tutorials on how to box a cake and how to cut a cake .
Best Free: My Cake School
My Cake School
Founded by a former cake baker and decorator, My Cake School is a free online platform that provides weekly tutorials and recipes.
The site covers lessons on everything from the basics to more advanced techniques such as working with fondant, gum paste, buttercream, and more. Recipes are divided into Cakes and Cupcakes, Fillings, Frostings and Glazes, Fondant/Gumpaste, and Miscellaneous, and you can also search for specific recipes.
The Free Tutorial section includes 40 pages of lessons on baking and decorating written in blog format and/or video that can be filtered through an easy drop-down menu. . Recipes featured include Lemon Sour Cream Cake, Chocolate Nutella Cake, Champagne and Strawberries Cake, Marbled Buttercream Cake, and many more.
There are also numerous holiday-themed cakes such as a decorative Easter Basket Cake or a Halloween Monster Pretzel Monster Cake. For an all-access pass to video archives and forums where you can ask specific questions about cake decorating, there is an option to become a member of the site for around $30 per year. There is also a shop section with helpful information about kitchen equipment and tools to help you with baking and decorating.
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Best For Sculpted Cakes: Avalon Cakes School
Avalon Cakes School
Why We Chose It: Avalon Cakes School has tutorials for show-stopping, realistic-looking sculptures and whimsical creations that make cakes look like works of art.
ProsTutorials are easy to browseMonthly livestreaming sessionsConsMany videos seem geared toward experienced bakers
Avalon Cakes School was started by Avalon Yarnes, who started baking at age 15. Shes been featured on TV and in books and magazines, and earned the Best Novelty Cake Artist award from Cake Masters Magazine in 2014. The outlet also named her one of the top 10 cake artists in North America in 2017. Yarnes, along with a number of other talented instructors, have tutorials on how to make gorgeous sculptural cakes, ranging from hyper-realistic to whimsically cartoonish.
You can browse the cake tutorials by categories like 3D Cakes, airbrushing, gravity-defying, sculpted cakes, special effects, and more. Its the sculpted cakes, however, that are true works of art. Sample tutorials include how to make a super realistic-looking lobster, a ganache-only carved pumpkin cake, and a Frankenstein head. The detail and coloring of each cake truly make these edible works of art.
Sculpted 3d Gift Box Advanced
Prerequisites: Buttercream Basics, Fun with Fondant, or have some prior experience of stacking, crumbcoating and working with fondant
Upcoming Dates: TBDMax Class Size: 6 peopleIndividual Price: $200Buddy Price: $190
Description: As a fun class for more advanced students, you will be stacking, carving, crumbcoating, fondanting and decorating a sculpted 3D gift box cake, with a slightly open lid, made entirely out of cake and sugar. All students in the class will sculpt the same shape box but will be free to decorate it to match their individual style. Students are welcome to bring their own reference photos to work from. Well discuss various cake carving and inner structure techniques as well as the process of creating a 3D cake from a 2D image. We will also explore using different texture effects along with food color painting to create a more realistic looking gift box. This class continues on with the skills and techniques acquired in our Buttercream Basics and Fun with Fondant classes, and thus has those classes as a prerequisite. All supplies are included, and students will get to take home their beautiful sculpted cakes !
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Wrapping And Chilling Your Cakes
Once your cakes are cool enough to handle, wrap them in two layers of plastic wrap and place into the freezer to chill for two hours or you can place them into the fridge to chill overnight. This is what I like to do so that I am not rushed to decorate. Do not freeze your cakes solid if you plan on using them the same day or it will just take a really long time to defrost them.
If you do freeze your cakes, place them on the counter still wrapped until they are defrosted.
Chilling your cakes is super important so that you can trim them and handle them without them breaking. The chilling causes the butter inside the cake to get nice and hard but will get soft again when the cake comes to room temperature.
Sugar Sugar Cake School
Specialises in: Buttercream cake decorating, fondant cake decorating
Sugar Sugar Cake School was founded by Australian cake decorator Amanda Lee. On her site, you can find an array of cake decorating classes on buttercream frosting and fondant cake techniques.
Additionally, youll also find helpful courses on how to start a cake business that teaches you how to develop a home-based bakery from scratch.
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How To Decorate A Cake
Now you can decorate your cake! This is actually the easiest part now that we have built our cake and frosted it so well, you have a nice clean canvas to start with!
For my cake, I placed some sprinkles into a large bowl and held my cake in my left hand. With my right hand I scooped up some sprinkles and pressed it to the sides of the cake, letting the excess fall back into the bowl. Dont worry, your cake will be ok!
Next, lets pipe some pretty rosettes for the top of the cake. I place my piping tip into my piping bag and cut off the end of the bag so the tip opening fits through the end. Dont cut too much off or the piping tip will fall out of the bag.
If you want to color your buttercream, just place a couple of big scoops into a bowl and add a couple of drops of your food coloring. Mix with a spatula until there arent any streaks left.
Next, place the bag into a cup and fold the edges down around the sides. This makes it easier to scoop some buttercream into the bag. You dont need a lot.
To pipe even rosettes, I pipe the first rosette and then turn the cake 90º so that the rosette is directly across from me. Then I pipe my second. Then I turn my cake 45º and do the same thing, basically piping directly between the first two rosettes and then I do the same on the other side. Then I just fill in the space between with two more rosettes. That way all my rosettes are the same size and spaced evenly.
The last thing I do is add some more sprinkles to the top of the cake!
