Class: Cake Decorating Basics

The Piggys are in school again! Just kidding.  But we are enrolled in Cake Decorating Basics at the NY Cake Academy.  Granted it's not a baking class so no guarantee our baking skills will be stellar after we 'graduate', but our baked goods will sure look snazzy!

The three lessons in the course are structured by Wilton, but offered by the NY Cake store in NYC.  The class is held in the basement of the store where there are tables and stools set up to accommodate about 10-12 students.

The class costs $100 for three 2 1/2 hour lessons and students are responsible for purchasing some Wilton supplies for the class, including the Decorating Basics Student Kit (comes with fun toys like icing bags, basic decorating tips, couplers, a spatula and a practice board with patterns), icing, icing colors, extra spatulas and other baking tools we still have yet to learn how to use! So far the basic supplies have cost about $60, money happily spent by us Piggys to further our cake decorating careers!

Displaying some of our decorating tools. See all the different tips too? Can't wait to learn how to use them!

We showed up to day 1 of class with our Decorating Student Kit, icing and cookies to decorate.  We met our instructor, Lisa Mansour, who with her family opened NY Cake years ago.

We were ready with eager smiles, aprons on and spatulas in hand... Now what??

Lisa to the rescue! She taught us how to make icing, how to prep and use icing bags and soon enough how to pipe stars and borders. Wilton's practice board that comes in the Student Kit was super useful - we piped icing onto the boards on top of patterns, and then when we were done we scraped it all off and started all over again! Lisa came around to check on each of us and helped if we were having trouble. 

Learning how to pipe icing on the Student Practice Board

We learned how to make stars, circles, shell boards and write.

Practicing piping stars

Not bad!

I think my icing handwriting may be better than my real handwriting!

Towards the end of class, we whipped out our cookies and started turning them into works of art.  Check out Piggy KK's baby carriage!

Piggy KK's baby carriage cookie!

Overall if you are interested in learning the basics, the class at NY Cake is a great and affordable option.  Lisa keeps the class fun and light, and the class size is small so everyone gets hands-on instruction.  She has years of cake decorating experience and happily shares her tidbits with the class.  We were worried the class would be a Wilton 'sales pitch', but this was not so.  She shares some specialty tools with the class so as not to force you to buy things you may only use once.

The down and dirty:  When calling NY Cake for info about the class, you may encounter an 'unfriendly' character, but don't take offense.  It doesn't reflect on the class at all!  Also, it's kind of inconvenient that they wait until the week approaching class to send you the supply list.  It doesn't leave much time for price-comparison shopping or perhaps even ordering online.  However to help alleviate the costs of supplies, during the first class they distribute 10% discount cards valid for the duration of the class.  Yay, more incentive to shop!

Stay tuned as Piggy KK will report back after Lesson #2 where we will decorate a whole cake!

Cake Boss, here we come!

Piggy KL