Wilton Course 1, Class 1

I've always loved to bake. Ever since I can remember, my Mom and I have been the "dessert queens" of the family...meaning for every family function we had, Mom and I were on dessert duty. I have to admit, we have some good recipes! (And these aren't even some of the real good ones we have either!)

Back when I finished my undergrad, I toyed with the idea of going to school to be a pastry chef. I really thought about it, and decided against it. I was afraid that my love of baking wouldn't really be a love anymore if I did it daily for a job.

So, I'm taking a class now instead!! I have to say that my main motivation in taking this class is Avery's birthday in a few months. I really want to make her cake this year! I can make a good cake....but decorating it?! Not so good. Let's just say that the artistic gene is not in me at all.

For Christmas, my Mom got me the Wilton cake decorating basic set. I opened it up and had no clue how to use any of it! Enter the Wilton cake decorating classes at Michael's.

The basic class is four weeks long-one class every Monday night for two hours. I will admit, it's more pricey than I thought it was going to be (not the class fee, but everything involved). I expected having to bake a cake each week and making icing, but not spending a fortune in the process. As I go through, I'll give a rough estimate of what I've spent money on so far.

For class 1, we had to bring the Wilton decorating basic kit ($35), a can of Wilton decorator icing ($5), Wilton food colorings ($10 for an 8 pack plus I bought 2 additional colors for $4), sugar cookies ($2) and a bunch of stuff from home (apron, pen, pencil, sticky notes, damp cloth, ziploc bag, container for your cookies, scissors).

The class was good...I definitely learned some things I didn't know. There are 4 of us total in the class, so it's nice and small. We first went through our kit and she went over what everything is. Then we learned how to assemble a pastry bag with couplers and we also made a pastry bag out of some paper that was in our kit. We learned how to fill the bag with icing and put on the chosen decorating tip.

Then we learned how to make the Wilton icing because we'll have to make it on our own for next week. She showed us the standard recipe and then how to change the consistency of it for different uses. She went over how to bake a cake and she also assembled one (with a filling) and iced/decorated it in like 5mins! Impressive!

We then practiced our first design which was the star. We first did it on our practice board and she came around and watched each of us do it. Once we got that, we got to decorate our cookies we brought. I will say I was a little disappointed because we only got 5 mins to decorate our cookies. Our class goes until 8:30 and at 8:20 she was like "Ok, let's decorate your cookies!" So I was bummed because we didn't have the time to really do anything "fun" with them. So, here's what mine looked like: Overall, it was a good class. I have "homework" for next week (baking a cake and making 2 batches of icing! I'm also supposed to practice my stars, but we'll see if that'll happen!) and am looking forward to class 2!