Wilton Method cake decorating

Since I've always been learning cake decorating by my own through books and the internet, I've always wondered the techniques and correct ways of cake decorating done by professional cake decorators. This year, I decided to stop wondering and enrolled myself in the Wilton cake decorating class. I started Wilton's Course 1 early of the month. When I joined, I was quite surprise to find out that most of the students have cake decorating experience and some even have their own family bakery. They enrolled with the same reason as I did which was to equip ourselves with the correct techniques in cake decorating.

I'm glad I enrolled since the classes taught students many techniques to decorate a cake. When applying these tehniques, cake decorating becomes much easier and better.

In the first class, we learned all about tips, folding parchement paper the wilton way and how to do crusting buttercream. I was happy to finally know how to do a crusting buttercream as all this while, I only use non-crusting buttercream. What's the difference you may ask - well its stiffer than normal buttercream thus do not require to be refrigerated and holds decoration much better for a longer period. Also, you are able to make the buttercream smooth like a fondant unlike the normal soft buttercream. My only reservation was that its uses shortening instead of butter and loads and loads of sugar :( . I prefer my buttercream to be all butter with just the right sweetness :).

In the subsequent classes, we learned how to do transfer design, how to pipe novelty figurine such as clown and the wilton roses.

For those interested, Wilton cake decorating method is an internationally renowned courses in cake decorating. ICCA Malaysia is authorised to conduct classes for the Wilton cake decorating method and those interested may enroll themselves either at ICCA branches at Kota Damansara, Hartamas or Petaling Jaya. There's 4 courses: Course 1, Course 2, Course 3 and Course 4 (optional) and at the end of each course, certificates would be given to successful participants. For those who completed all 3 courses may even have the opportunity to become a Wilton Instructor that's licensed to conduct Wilton cake decorating classes. I recommend those interested in cake decorating to attend Wilton cake decorating courses since in my humble opinion, the knowledge gained is priceless. I'll be attending the 2nd course in February and will update the blog with this later.

The picture shows the cake that we did at our final class. The decoration uses crusting buttercream. Not too happy with the roses though :( .... neeed to practice more on this :)