Class Diary: Cake Decorating

Our burgeoning baker, 13-year-old Marly Tashmina, is continuing her culinary foray with cake decorating. She explains what she learnt in the three-hour class. 

I recently attended a cake decorating class at Cookery School. I bake quite a lot in my spare time and I was really excited to attend a detailed class like this.

The chef was incredibly engaging and brought a welcoming and fun atmosphere to the room. He opened by explaining everything that we would be learning and the skills that we should have afterwards, giving us a great indication of what was to come!

We started by making a basic sponge recipe, as well as learning about the properties of each ingredient. I love how a lot of the focus is on learning about sustainability and that we used all organic and free-range ingredients.

With this batter, we made cupcakes and set them aside. After this, we were shown how to make buttercream icing by hand. This was really useful to learn, especially if you don’t have a machine. I was shocked about how light the icing was – it actually tasted nicer!

We were then allowed to choose a colour each, colour our allocated batch of icing and then practice piping on the cupcakes that we made. A basic sponge, prepared earlier, had been set aside and we learnt how to cut it in half and fill it with jam and cream. We then began work on fondant. We learnt how to colour it, roll it out and cover our cake with it. We worked on polystyrene cake models, which meant we were able to do it many times and had room for mistakes! Once we’d mastered the basics, we moved onto making fondant roses, which we then put on our cake as the finishing touch.

The class was incredibly fun and interactive, so three hours went quickly! I learnt so many tips and tricks that will definitely help me in the future and best of all, got to take my iced cupcakes and fondant home. I can’t wait to keep practicing my icing technique!

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Want to learn more about the craft of cakes? Check out all our classes!

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