Cake decoration, back to basics

When I started making cake for people,  I'd thought I'd be doing  cupcakes, tray bakes deserts and the like,  but everyone I speak to invariably asks me if I do celebration cakes.  Yes I can do celebration cakes is my answer, but nothing fancy.  I don't know why I say that as i'm a good cake maker and have made some great cakes resulting in lots praise.   But am I a confident cake decorator? - no,  so I thought right, go and learn properly and build confidence.

This week I signed up for a 12 week evening class in cake decoration at Ayr college.   In Scotland we can apply for an ILA grant of £200 per year and luckily that has paid for the course.    Once the 12 weeks is up I may move on to advanced cake decoration- lets see how I get on.

There were 18 of us in the class with ages ranging from 16 to 60 ish, men and women.  Over the weeks I hope to get around and find out why people are there.  My companion this week was hoping that by the end of the course she'll be able to make and decorate her daughters wedding cake in May..... how lovely is that!

We started with the basics, butter icing which we flavoured, coloured and piped on to sheets of greaseproof paper.  We then refilled and repiped to perfect the toppings on our imaginary cupcakes.  I've topped a few cupcakes in my time, but wasn't initially that impressed with my offering.   My nozzle was too small.  Still, by the fourth go I figured out how to work with the smaller nozzle and was happy with the result.   Normally at home I wouldn't mess around like that, get the job done and not waste time or buttercream ..... so on the one hand it was great to be practising but then devastating to have to throw it all away at the end of the lesson!.   Some who were driving managed to pack their icing away for use at home.  I had a cold wet rainy walk home so it wasn't possible.

Next week we'll make cupcakes and fondant icing, It was really nice to spend time with other bakers and get back to basics.  Can't wait for next week.  I wonder if they'll mind me taking my camera.