Eggless Chocolate Cake for Wilton Course 1 - Class 4

Blogging Marathon# 27: Week 4/ Day 7
Theme: Miscellaneous - Wilton Decorating Course 1 - Class 4
Dish - Eggless Chocolate Cake

It is the last day in April which means it is the last and final day of our Blogging Marathon# 27. Kudos to the entire group for successfully completing this challenge and thanks to Valli for being the best organizer as ever. 

Coming back to my Wilton decorating course, for 4th class we had to bring a cake that was torted, leveled and frosted ready to decorate. Final class was dedicated to making roses and writing/ printing on the cake -- all the final touches for a good looking cake.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was the only student left in the class and I had the undivided attention of the instructor. I'm not sure if this was good or bad, since I felt like an unfocused 5 year old making these roses. There are about 10 things that need to be remembered while making the roses like right hand should be steady, hold the tip at a certain angle, rotate the flower nail in one direction and so on. I kept forgetting one instruction after the other much to my chagrin. Oh well, finally I got the hang of it, but my roses where nowhere as cute as the instructor's. I need to practice a little more on my technique.

Read more »

Eggless Chocolate Cupcakes for Wilton Course 1 - Class 3

Blogging Marathon# 27: Week 4/ Day 6
Theme: Miscellaneous - Wilton Decorating Course 1 - Class 3
Dish - Eggless Chocolate Cupcakes

For Class 3, we were asked to bring 6 cupcakes and butter-cream icing ready to use in piping bags. So by 3rd week, I realized that this decorating course definitely needs quite a bit of prior preparation. It took me  about 3-4 hours spaced out in 2 days to prepare the cupcakes, make the icing, fill the bags and get everything else ready. So if you want to take the course make sure that you have some free time to prepare for the class. We started out with 3 students in the first class, we were 2 in second class and I was the only one in the last 2 classes. It was good in a way that I got 100% attention from the instructor, but I would have liked to see how others did in the class as well.

Week 3 is about decorating cupcakes, using various tips to make flowers, leaves, scrolls etc. What I learnt was different consistency icings are used to make different shapes, for example medium consistency icing is used to make the flowers and swirls (pink & blue icing in the pics below) and thin consistency icing for leaves.

Read more »

Eggless Vanilla Cake for Wilton Course 1-Class 2

Blogging Marathon# 27: Week 4/ Day 5
Theme: Miscellaneous - Wilton Decorating Course 1 - Class 2
Dish - Eggless Vanilla Cake with Wilton Butter-cream frosting

Wilton decorating course is a once a week 2 hour class for a total of 4 classes. For the second class, we were required to bring a 8" cake and 2 recipes of butter-cream frosting ready to use in the class. This class focused on torting (slicing a cake into layers) and leveling a cake, frosting and then transferring a design on to it. Again we were asked to buy quite a few tools to do this. Since I'm planning to make more cakes, I bought everything they had in the list, like this cake leveler, turntable and cake lifter. Fancy stuff, eh?? Good thing was I had a 25% off store coupon which saved me quite a bit.  

What I learnt was to always use thin consistency icing for frosting the cake and it's not as easy as it looks (at least that's what I think). We also learnt some piping techniques, like curving lines, zigzags and filling in.

I made an eggless vanilla cake and I think this will be my go-to vanilla going forward. I saw the recipe on Sharmi's blog and than Suma made it too, so I went ahead and made it for the class. It is a fluffy and moist cake that stands up to the frosting. Double the ingredients and make 2 cakes if taking to the decorating class.
Just as a side note, it was my choosing to make eggless bakes for the course, you can make any of your favorite recipe or store-bought mix. Also Wilton's butter-cream recipe has meringue powder in it, which is nothing but pasteurized powdered egg whites, so if you want to make this completely egg-free, then you might want to not use it in the recipe.

Read more »

Chocolate Cookies for Wilton Course 1 (Class 1)

Blogging Marathon# 27: Week 4/ Day 4
Theme: Miscellaneous - Wilton Decorating Course 1/ Class 1
Dish: Chocolate Cookies

I have been planning to take cake decorating classes for a long time now. Schedule never seemed to work out. Finally I signed up for the Wilton Decorating Course 1 in our nearest Arts & Crafts store. Even though I've been baking for years now, my decorating skills were non-existent. I feel bad looking at the pictures of cupcakes I had sent to my son's daycare on his birthday -- very pathetic. I'm glad that the kids liked the taste, if they hadn't and if they had gone with the looks, I would have gotten the whole batch untouched.

Course was only $20, but they give a list of things to buy. Wilton Course 1 kit and the course book are the two important things to buy before the first class along with few other things. You are also required to bring 6 cookies to decorate. I made chocolate cookies for the class (recipe follows) using recipe from Joy of Baking. I halved the original recipe and instead of making roll out cookies, I made the dough into log and then cut them into cookies.

Read more »