Hi. I was wondering when you first start out do you concentrate on one kind of cake? I mean do you work on for example children's birthday cake until you feel pretty confident and move on to other kids of cake like adult's birthday or anaversiry etc? I am just starting out and have taken Wiltons @ courses, and wanted to know how to fine tune my decorating skills?
How did you guys start out?
OR should one attack different kinds of cake as they come ( LEaving wedding cakes out of the picture for now.)
What is your opnion?

Hi. I think the best way is to practice on any kind of cake. I think this helps boost your confidence. And if you have taken the Wilton courses...you would be fine in even doing a wedding cake! I actually think the wedding cakes are easier than kids cakes. You don't have to mix up all the colors and stuff! I have fun doing a variety and that way I never get bored! Have fun!
traci

When I first began cake decorating I just made basic round cakes with rose sprays. I would always take them to work since they were practice cakes. Then I began experimenting with different celebration cakes such as baby showers, birthdays, etc. I would get most of my inspirations from the Wilton yearbooks.

In my opinion, once you've learned the basics of cake decorating you pretty much can do everything.

HI
I have to agree that wedding cake can be eaiser than childrens bithday cakes and novility cakes. The less colors to coordinate, tiny spots to fill with millions of stars. When I finished with the 3 wilton courses I was wanting to try many different things. I found that certain techniques felt better to me than others so when I am going to do a wedding cake or a cake to sell, I make sure I do the stuff I know I am doing well. I will do new things but when I am selling the cake I want only my best work to be on the cake. Do not be scared to try, just give yourself enough time before the cake is needed to mend any problems. Case in point; I had a large wedding shower cake to make due on a Saterday at 11am. Maybe I got lazy or cocky but I did not even bake it until 6pm Friday. Then decided to try a new quick pour hot fondant I had never tried before. Needless to say I was scraping off piles of melted buttercream and hot fondant goo and starting all over at 10pm Friday. I re-crumb coated and put all in the frezer for the night. Early in the AM I used fresh flowers and old faithful techniques and finished in time. I Love the smell of fresh flowers and buttercream at 6AM!!!!!
Practice is the best medicine and do not get discouraged!!

I take every opportunity I get to make something different. I haven't really made the same thing twice yet! I have not done a wedding cake but we cross that road when it comes time. I just take every cake as a learning experiance. I take pictures and keep them in an album for myself with notes as to how I made it and went worked and what didn't work so that I know for the next time

Hey,

I finished the Courses then BOOM went right to decorating anything & everything! I freaked out about my first wedding cake order & when it was over I asked myself why did I freak out so much?? I like doing kids cakes but do not like doing character cakes w/ all the stars on them! I try to stay away from them! I just finished my 2nd character cake Fri. & I don't plan on doing another one anytime soon!! My hands are still sore!!

I have stuck to one cake recipe, I wanted to get it perfect! I tweeked it to my likings & I think I've succeeded. Now I'm looking for another great recipe for a white cake. Then I'll get that down & go to another one! It's so fun!!

Doing wedding cakes can be stressful.. if something goes wrong, I think we all freak out but we still get them done and handle the situations as they come along I think if you could bake for family members, i.e, birthdays, anniversaries and get some experience under you, then move on to the wedding cake scene .. I baked cakes for work a lot too .. they were basically my guinea pigs .. I made cakes just to make them... I'd bring them to work and got no complaints from anyone about them lol ... just remember, the more you practice, the better you get

i did what ever came my way, steering clear of weddings, but if you want to perfect your skills you will have to do all kinds of experimenting.

Interesting! I agree that it is easier not to have to mix up ten colours of icing, but I still believe that wedding cakes are a lot more challenging and time-consuming than any other cakes you could make. Haha, maybe not as tiring as zillions of stars can be for your hands, but definitely more stress to get it perfect.
I think that you are wise to get more experience and knowledge before you take on wedding cakes.
I think that it is extremely important to familiarize yourself with wedding cake construction, get a book on wedding cakes. Find out the various types of construction and practice, practice practice. Be very honest about your skill level and experience level before you hang out your shingle and advertise that you do wedding cakes.
Of all the cakes you can make, a wedding cake has to be the most perfect. This is what the brides expect, it is a crucial part of their most important day. Limit yourself to designs that you can actually do an excellent fascimile of.
Time and time again, I see cases of home bakers misrepresenting their skill levels and the disastrous results. I don't think that this is a fair or good practice and it gives a lot of us a bad name as we are lumped in with the decorators who don't put the time or practice into their work.
You would not believe the amount of emails I get from people who have misrepresented their skill levels and don't have a clue about what they are doing and there they are making wedding cakes for unsuspecting brides. You would not believe how many posts there are about this same topic on all of the sites. It really makes me angry. Some of them don't even bother to try to find out the information they should have at hand before they even attempt the cake.
So they turn out lopsided cakes that are teetering on pillars that are crooked. Some of the cakes are totally unsupported or sitting on the edges of little cakes with no centre support and no dowelling in the edges of the cakes they are sitting on. The cakes are stacked, but not dowelled or boarded. The icings or fillings that should be refridgerated are not.
I have heard many tales of cakes collapsing onto the floor. Others where the top tiers slid onto the table because the cakes were nowhere near level. Or cakes sinking into each other because the cakes themselves were too delicate to support the stacked weight.
Cakes with wired stems stuck right into the cake, or fresh flowers that were not organicially grown, just shoved into the cake.
Ignorance is no excuse, you wouldn't pour a house foundation if you didn't know anything about foundation and support and structure.
What I am finding is that a lot of folks think that if they have taken the Wilton courses, they know everything there is to know about cakes and this is simply not true. If you have done one class wedding cake, it does not make you a wedding cake expert.
I think folks are far better off making wedding cakes for family members or friends or folks on limited budgets that know what they are getting into, then hanging out their shingles to the general and unsuspecting public.
The more I read, the more I am convinced that sometimes common sense seems to be in short supply and folks take on things that are at the present time, way above their skill level. They don't schedule their time and end up in a panic mode. Or they take on a really difficult order then they post to all of the cake sites asking for help for the cake they need to do in a day or two from now and everyone runs to try to get them all of the information they will need. So perhaps we are just making it worse by giving them the step-by-step details Saturday, that they need for a cake due Monday. I am fast coming to that conclusion.
If you advertise that you can make a certain cake, then surely you should know how much batter it takes, how many servings it will make, how much icing you should make, what supports and boards and plating you should use etc. Then you should also be able to figure out how to do the designs on the cake, after all you advertised that you could do it.
I fully understand and am sympathetic with folks that are making their son or daughter's wedding cake or one for a friend or family member and don't have the knowledge and need help. But if you are going to hang out your shingle and say that you can make these cakes, then surely you should have made some effort to get the information on how to do it and know how to do the decorating you advertise you are able to do.
Yes people on these sites like to help and that is a good thing. But sometimes there is a fine line between helping and actually enabling someone to act irresponsibly.
I have read many posts by decorators who were slightly miffed that a bride was upset when a cake toppled or was crooked and such. Seems like a lot of decorators don't feel that the brides should expect a reasonably well done to almost perfect cake. In my view these decorators shouldn't be advertising that they do wedding cakes.
Maybe a lot of folks will disagree, but I think that it is more crucial to turn out a perfect wedding cake than it is to turn out a perfect birthday cake for a 5 year old. Yes, the five year old's cake should be very well done indeed, but then again there isn't the same risk factors or importance placed on a birthday cake.
Hugs Squirrelly Cakes

Hi, I've been decorating cakes since January. I just learn as I go and don't concentrate on any specific ones. I've done 3D Ball cakes and a few birthday cakes, and one choco-holic cake, besides all the ones I've done just messing around the house. I have however printed off all the new techniques I'm wanting to try and they sit in a recipe book waiting for the right cake to come along to practice on. I think everyone's different - I still consider myself new and gaining experience.

Well said Squirrellycakes. I would not even accept a birthday order yet. I have so much to learn and would hate for anyone to be dissapointed. I have done 1 b-day cake, but for fun, her family has another cake for the real thing,the one i did was for her class to eat.
I could not imagine doing a wedding cake yet, piping is a challenge for me at the moment, fondant is coming along, have realised what mistakes i am making and now fixing that.
Thankyou for being so honest, i think if you are a novice, be just that and dont overexcel yourself cause its your reputation on the line. Stick with what you know and practise the rest on family.

Heehee, our poor families! I think most of us do that, or try out something new on unsuspecting guinea pigs, er family members, haha!
Heehee, seems to be a pet peeve of mine lately. It sort of surprises me, I must admit. I mean, you wouldn't advertise as a professional seamstress capable of making wedding dresses if you had no experience or think you could build a house just because you attended a Home Depot demo on drywalling, so why should cake decorating be any different?
One day I came across a site about wedding cakes. There was a link to another site where they were warning folks about using homebakers for their wedding cakes. It really stuck in my mind. Now the article pretty much painted all home bakers with the same paint brush and that wasn't fair. Still, it proved that there were many folks that had bad experiences with home bakers and wedding cakes. The comments were from brides or wedding guests about some of the disasters. I guess there are a lot of folks out there misrepresenting their skills.
I have seen so many posts on the Wilton site where folks say they have urgent need for information on how to do a wedding cake in a couple of days for an order they took from a customer. Bear in mind, I am talking about advertising and taking paid customers, not friends or family members or a cake for someone that knows the skill level of the decorator and is willing to take a chance. Then they proceed to ask for such detailed information that by the time folks respond, it is almost like they may as well make the cake themselves. To my way of thinking, if they told a bride they can handle the order, they should have some idea of how to do it. I can see asking for a bit of help, but when they need every single thing explained, right down to recipes, amounts, how to dowel, how to board, how to decorate, well they are in way over their head. They always need the information in less than a week and it really makes you wonder.
Most people make practice cakes for a really difficult or time consuming cake or something they aren't familiar with. Most wedding cake orders are taken a few weeks ahead, if not months. That way the decorator has time to practice or experiment. Normally you would only take on things you know you can do, not take a huge order for a fondant covered cake if you are not experienced with fondant or a cake that calls for intriciate Royal Icing piping when you have never used Royal Icing before.
It is almost like they want to make the big bucks and rely on everyone around them to drop what they are doing so they can figure it all out for them in record time.
Anyway, just something I am seeing as developing into a pattern.
Hugs Squirrelly Cakes

Probably should have added this, there is nothing wrong with being upfront and telling the customer that you haven't done something before, but you think you can do it and then practicing to see if you actually can. I think customers appreciate it when you are honest with them. There is also nothing wrong with telling them that it will be your first wedding or other type of cake.
You really have to give a customer an idea of what your comfort level is.
Hugs Squirrelly Cakes

Thanks for the advice. Yes squirel nothing worse that saying you can do something ( like a particular wedding cake) not being able to deliver. I was in a situation making a small cake for someone ( just finished radiation)and ended beingfor 80 people. It is a big deal especially when they were going to display it etc. But I told the people my skill level and that I was doing if for and they were so encouraging. I made it and it was appreciated. I would have hated for them to expect this perfect cake and be dissapointed. Thne everything happened I encountered cracks in the middle etc. I was so glad that I had a community here to help me out, to iron out somethings.
thanks Squirl for your sinsight and honesty.

Can I just say, in response to Squirrelly's post, though, that my sister went to a VERY reputable bakery for her wedding cake. She paind TOP dollar for it and when we arrived at the reception hall--the ENTIRE top of the cake was practically falling on the floor!! My mom and I had to literally go into the kitchens of the hall and beg for equipment to fix it. It was not properly doweled and the weight of the top layers were crushing the cake underneath. We ended up doing the best we could and then turning it so it leaning backwards so that if it fell--at least it wouldn't hit anyone.

It's not just "home decorators" or small operations that make errors. Personally, I would have NEVER left that cake in the condition it was. When my sister called them afterwards--they barely offered an apology. Now, I realize that sometimes things happen, mistakes are made. But the bakery could not honestly blame it on the hall (saying that they must have moved the table, etc.) when THEY are the one's who did not properly construct a cake.

I, for one, have never misrepresented myself. I will not do huge tiered cakes on pillars. I will do pillars, but I have my limits. I have made large cakes and transported them myself and have had to move them after they were assembled. By staying within my limits--none of mine have ever fallen or slid. I wish I could say the same for my sister's wedding cake. (We actually took a picture of us standing--leaning in the direction of the cake--that's how bad it was. Sort of funny now--after 5 tears--but it wasn't at the time.)

Lisa

I just completed my first "paid "order. It was for a friends 4 year old B-day. I say "paid" but in reality we traded a bike her son out grew for my son. I just don't feel comfortable charging $ just yet. She was so pleased when she saw the cake that she wanted to pay me for it but I said no. I was a nervous wreck that she would like it. I told my husband that I can never imagine doing a wedding cake if I am this nervous about a 4 year old HAHA. By the way, they came to pick up the cake and the B-day boy looked at it said COOL and off he went to play with my son.

I haven't done a wedding cake yet, but I'm slowly working up the courage to experiment with one. DH's mother was a WONDERFUL wedding cake designer and was very well known in our part of L.A. for her wedding cakes. Being I have her last name I figure that I will have to live up to the reputation, you know? That's okay though, she was a wonderful woman who I wouldn't mind emulating (as well as my own mother!)

WOW! You all are making me really nervous! I just volunteered to do a cake for a friends daughter. Even though the couple both live here in Dallas they are getting married and having a reception in Georgia (a long story). A couple of weeks later, my friends are hosting a reception back here. The MOB was just going to pick up a sheet cake from Sam's.

She does know that I have not done a big wedding cake and told me that whatever I wanted to do would be great. It will be a surprise for the bride since she is expecting a plain cake from Sam's. So I plan to stick to buttercream with roses, vines and leaves. I have done a small tiered cake and a small stacked cake but nothing more than 2 levels. That is the part I am most nervous about. The cake I do will need to feed about 120 people so I am figuring out how big that is!

Here I am rambling but I guess the point with this post is that I have been very upfront about my skills and my friend (MOB) is aware of what I have done in the past and she has tasted my cakes. Even with all that I am excited but very nervous!

When you do a 'practice' cake is it usually the full scale cake or a smaller version? Do you use real cake or a dummy?

Thanks,
Cindy

Well, I would use a real cake just so you will know how the texture of the cake you make will come about, how the frosting and fillings will work with it, etc.... you don't have to go all extravagant, even the simplist of cakes can be made to look like the most beautiful. Besides, wouldn't you like to know exactly how the cake will taste? I'm sure you could find loads of volunteers to eat it.

Debbi

Thanks. That makes sense to me to do a real cake.


C