College Course

[victoria]

Well, I had my interview for the cake decoration course I planned to do this year, but it is ALL royal icing...very disappointed...I did want to learn some basic royal icing skills, but I would have liked it to have included some sugar flowers and other cake decorating skills...the course cost is £340, then there is £40 of royal icing decorating equipment to buy, a uniform which costs £28 and then all the dummies and boards you need to use throughout the course...is there any great demand for royal iced cakes these days, they all look a bit old fashioned to me...?

I have found a couple of short courses at another college which is a bit further away from me which are specifically sugar flowers and cake decorating for mixed ability...I think these may be a better option, and are a lot cheaper...

[rach]

Must admit royal icing seems to be abit out at the mo.....most go for sugarpaste as you get a smoother shinier finish and it is quicker and cheaper to do.....piping is still a great skill to have with the royal icing and all the extension work etc etc you can do is amazing but again very time comusing and alot of people dont want it because it costs to much..shame really becuase it does look wonderful

[britjap]

I gather from your other post that you went for the Royal icing course after all. Should be great, it is an important skill even if not often called for. The piping techniques will be useful on sugarpaste cakes too though. I have just started a general cake decorating evening course (teacher trained in a bakery so has a range of skills, though we don't go into anything fancy), would have liked to do C&G but none of the colleges here do it any more as there was more call for less onerous courses. Let us know how you get on with it, please.

[victoria]

yes, I've started the course, its a bit slow and frustrating as not many of the other ladies and gents have done any sort of cake decorating before, so today we were shown how to make icing bags and actually got to pipe a few shells, sea scrolls and ropes. Hope it quickens up a bit or I think I will get bored.