Thursday, September 2, 2010

Carnation Cake - Wilton's Cake Decorating Class Review

Category: Cakes > Butter > Decorated > Carnation Cake

So here it is, my final project cake for the last of the three Wilton's Cake Decorating Classes. Happily, it is also the only one of the three final project cakes that I was actually happy with! Psssh, it also happens to be the first fondant cake I've done.

The fondant was a home made gelatin fondant because the Wilton's fondant tastes pretty bad. The carnations are made with gum paste, the yellow ribbon border is fondant, the brown shells is buttercream icing, and cake board is covered with fondant.

Honestly, I don't like cake board covered with fondant. No matter what your cake looks like, it always seems to make the cake look like a hat.





So, now that I finished all of the new Wilton's Cake Decorating Classes, what do I think? I think meh. I would recommend the classes but they could be so much better. I think the curriculum is flawed and error filled. It's like they didn't proof or trouble to check it once it was written.

Some sessions were jam packed with almost too much information while others seemed a bit on the skimpy side. The new courses removed a lot of information that I was sad to see left out like color flow and tiered cake construction.

The first, basic class, was the best. The other too classes just seemed to focus on how to make different types of flowers. Fondant was barely covered at all. Don't get me wrong, flowers are nice, but there was a lot of overlap between the last two courses. I think that was because they wanted to design the last two courses so you could take them in any order. But, if they removed that and tightened up the curriculum, they could have added a few more flowers to the course ware.

Another huge problem I had was that it is painfully obvious that the main goal behind these courses is to sell more Wilton's products and to get you to buy as much as possible. I don't mind Wilton's wanting to sell their stuff, but towards the end it was insulting and rude. In the final course, it got so bad that they were telling you to buy things that you never used during any of the courses! Wilton's would do a much better job getting me to be a loyal Wilton's customer by providing a good curriculum and proving themselves to be an honest company rather than playing these little games. As it stands right now, I'm just as likely to buy some other brand than Wilton's because they have proven to be just another corporate-greedy company. But perhaps doing business with a smaller company with integrity, and maybe paying a little more, is more important to me than some other people.

All that being said, I did learn a lot and if you are interested in learning about cake decorating, the Wilton's classes are not terrible. I would recommend them to someone who was interested.

I ended up shelling out quite a bit of money for all three courses (at least $400). So beware it isn't cheap, but I did end up with one really nice cake decorating kit for all my future endeavors.

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