I had never done a cupcake decorating course before and I was pretty excited to see what it was all about. I knew that we would be working with fondant, colours and other decorating elements I hadn’t worked with before, making wonderful designs and learning techniques that I would use for years to come.
I wouldn’t call myself a hard-core cake decorator. I love to bake, I love spending time in the kitchen creating and trying, sometimes failing, trying again and every so often creating something that I’m proud to say I made. So when the opportunity came up to participate in this cupcake decorating course I knew I had to take it.
The first thing we learnt was how to work with fondant. We learnt about working it and mixing colours into it effectively. We even learnt how to mix in colours without getting it all over our hands!
Working colour into fondant is a therapeutic process close to kneading dough, but with a sweet smell that you just don’t get when making bread or pastry.
We used Americolor colours for the fondant and gumpaste and the colours turn out amazing! When thinking about colours I used a colour palette app on my phone to get some ideas about the different colours to use on my cupcake decorations.
Handy Tip
Build up your colour gradually when working with fondant and gumpaste. Then you won’t get a marbling effect and it won’t get all over your hands. You only need to add a couple of drops at a time. Less is definitely more in this case.
Once we had mixed our colours we went on to our next project.
This section of the course was dedicated to making some amazing cupcake toppers. We had the opportunity to use silicon moulds to make a flower and a cameo. These we decorated with some sparkly shimmer which added an amazing sheen and texture to the decorations.
Next we used plunger cutters to make a butterfly. I’ve got to say I was pretty happy with my effort. We even learnt a little trick to make the wings stay upright (you’ll have to do the course to learn that one!).
Next we learnt how to make a rose by using gumpaste and the technique of frilling and rolling.
I was amazed at how easy and simple this technique was and the end result turned out great!
Next was getting the fondant we had coloured onto the cupcakes themselves. This was a little tricky as you needed to make them smooth and even. It reminded me of laying concrete and using a cement trowel to smooth off the edges… but much tastier and colourful!
We learnt about how to create patterns on our fondant to make them look elegant and textured along with adding our decorations, lace and we even managed to pop in some icing to our piping bags and have a crack at adding dots, patterns and swirls (I wasn’t very good at this).
As a pretty experienced home cook and I would say a fairly novice cake maker, it was wonderful to have a teacher that was patient, explained things really well and showed us a myriad of skills that were easy to understand and follow (thanks Heather!).
All in all, my experience was a lot of fun, well worth the money and I got some amazing looking cupcakes to boot. When I got home my wife couldn’t believe that I actually made them. She kept asking me if I really made them… “Really, you made these?”.... “I mean… you made them, not the teacher?” like I dropped into a cupcake shop on the way home or something!