Hi UK Bakers!! Just wanted to pop in and say hi, I started reading the thread, its lovely to read about uk experiences! I am a childminder at the moment with 2 small boys of my own. my last kid has moved on and I am now at a crossroads, I want to make the leap to cake decorating, but feel TERRIFIED!! I have been decorating for about 2 years or so, mainly for friends and in the last few months have done some cakes to order. I am already registered with EH and tax, and would love to do the cake course at the local college but its 350 quid.....eeek! Have any of you guys done courses, and if so which ones, and were they any good?
Lovely to read how you are all getting on, hope you dont mind me jumping in, its just lovely to read about some other people in a simmilar position to me!

Hi jojo76 I did 2 years at college in Glasgow and it was about the same price each year as your course. First thing you should check out is if the course is eligible for ILA funding (Individual Learning Account) then find out if you are eligible, if you are then that would give you £250 towards the cost.

Second get a detailed schedule of work from the college, you are best asking to speak to the person who runs the course to get this, the admissions office will probably have a really high level description along the lines of "learn how to decorate cakes"! the lecturer will go over exactly what it involves, I spent 12 weeks each year working on royal icing and in some ways it was a total waste of time, I haven't ever used the skills I learnt from that part of the coures so make sure it covers the topics you want to learn.

On the plus side everyone on the course will be interested in cake decorating and it is nice to spend time chatting to people who share your interests, I learnt lots from others on the couse as well as the tutor.

Someone once told me that most college courses are very out of date and that was true of the couse I did, there was a lot of old fashioned formal flower arrangemens, pastiage, piping shell borders etc. but in the end they are all skills which you can use at home on projects more suited to your own tastes.

I have also done quite a lot of one day classes with local cake decorators and they are always really informative, if there is anyone who teaches in your area you should check out what they offer.

Sara

Hi everyone! I'm from Salisbury, Wiltshire & it's lovely to find other cake enthusiasts from the UK!

I've been decorating for a couple of years now and am wondering if I might be ready soon to start a business (home based). I've got 4 wedding cake orders coming up in the next year for friends at the cost of ingredients to boot my portfolio a bit and then I think I'll register. Just so worried I'm not good enough!

I've got a question actually, what do you do for fillings - I want to offer more than buttercream but I'm worried about the filling going off. Can you make ganache with UHT cream? What about cream cheese frosting, does anyone do that?

HI there, welcome to the thread! You have to use cream for ganache. And just mix that with your normal buttercream. THat is what I use all the time. I have read that in another forum that you can make chocolate mousse from UHT milk. But I don't know the recipe. If you mcake cream cheese frosting, you need to store the cake in the fridge, which I don't like doing!

I make my ganache with double cream. Because of the sugar qauntity in the chocolate, it acts as a preservative. I use ganache and bc mix all the time in my choc cakes. And I have used just ganache as a coating under sugarpaste/fondant. Its absolutely fine. Australian decorators use ganache all the time.

And also, orange goes really well with the chocolate. So you might want to try mixing a little bit of orange marmalade with choc bc. I have't tried that yet though!

You can use lemon curd in your lemon cake. Or you can mix lemon curd with your bc too. I have made my own curd with different fruits. Really Yummy!

Ah, that's really good to know - I much prefer ganache to choc buttercream. I've tried lemon curd before & it's lovely - I might give passionfruit a go soon though. I'm just trying to get a really good, large selection of cakes and fillings to offer that I've tried & tested before I take the plunge! I was thinking of maybe trying ganache made with terrys chocolate orange - I wonder if that would work. Also a chocolate ganache with peppermint essence added and some after eights chopped through it.

Thank you for your help on this - it's put my mind at rest!

I thought this thread had come to a standstill as I wasn't getting any reminders of new posts. Sabz. I think you did a great job of the bow cake. Very impressive. Zomac I was just reading your future plans. I hope things work out for you. I do wonder how you are going to balance all that study for teacher training along with everthing else. I only work part time as a TA but I know how much work goes into teaching and I think it is a rewarding career so I hope you are able to balance that with your cake making.
Bashini thanks for hints and advice on fillings. Most people I bake for only ask for jam and buttercream and as almost all of my cakes are done for free or at cost I am loathe to try other fillings because of costs as most of the people I know are as skint as I am.
I did have a go at indebys buttercream for some cupcakes but I needed to change the measures over to British. (I still use imperial wieghts. I'm old school) Then half it as I didn't need so much. It tasted fantastic if a bit too soft. I needed to add a bit more Icing sugar.
I would love to have a go at mmf and probably will one day.
Can I ask. Is meringue powder dried egg powder/ albumen?As I have some that I could use to practise crusting buttercream on. There is not a call for buteercream iced cakes here but I would like to try a small one out of curiosity.

buttercream of course.

I forgot to mention that you can use Italian Merangue Buttercream instead of buttercream. And I have used Wilton's half butter and half trex buttercream and that was lovely too. I've tried Sugarshack's buttercream abd that is also delicious.

I don't make my sugarpaste, because it is hard work. I have made MMF and its too sweet for my taste. But I really like Michele Fosters sugar paste.

Rosiepan, thanks. I thought this thread had come to standstill too, coz didn't get any notifications. Wonder why. Zomac, glad you discovered this thread! And a hi to jojo too
I'm starting to prepare for a cake stall I've booked for June 14th. I made a few trial cakepops, but they all came off the stick when we were eating them even though I had dipped the sticks in chocolate first before inserting into cake. Hope that doesn't happen when I make them again. Wanted to try red velvet cake for it but recipe calls for buttermilk. I've never come across it, do we know it as something else? And on Bakerella website, she says to use chocolate bark. Reckon it would be ok to use normal baking chocolate?
I'm nervous, but hope that day goes well!

Sabz, you can get buttermilk in Sainsbury's. They have it where the cream is.

sabz i've seen it in asda too. over by the cream as well. Havent looked for it in tesco's but they might have it too. X

My local Tesco occasionally have buttermilk in.

It tastes just like sour cream to me, so I reckon you could substitute one for the other?!

Thanks guys. I'm on my way to Asda now, so will have a look.

Hi all, thanks for the warm welcome.
Good luck with the cake stall, Sabz, that sounds a lot of fun. There was a cup cake stall at the milton keynes food fair at the weekend, it looked fantastic and she looked very busy...
What is chocolate bark??
Thanks so much for the advice on the cake courses saracupcake, I hadn't thougt about the course being old fashioned, that would be a bit dissappointing, although as you say, it would be good to learn new skills that I can transfer to my own style I guess. I think I feel thatI want to do a course to make myself feel a bit more prepared and legitimate if you know what I mean??

Just wanted to say to everyone too, I found bargain cupcake and muffin cases, 49p per packet of 100 in QD Store today, if anyone has a branch near them. They are very thin, but great if you are just baking for the family or trying out new ideas as I am at the moment. I find cases so expensive!

Hi jojo76,

Where abouts are you located?

Pauline

Hi Pauline, Im in Bedford, how about you?

Jojo76,

I'm in Ayrshire, Scotland. I somehow thought you were in Glasgow. Don't know where I got that from??
Anyway, welcome to the forum.

Pauline

Thank you! Im really glad to have found it, i'm looking forward to chatting to everyone!
I think it was sara cupcake that was talking about courses in glasgow.....

Hi Everyone,

I was hoping for some advice on making a princess castle cake for my niece. I came across this picture in the gallery, not sure who made it, but it is the prettiest castle cake I've seen.

http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=1369960

I'm not really too sure where to start. For the pillars - is this just plastic ones covered in fondant? If so, where would I get these? The pillars on top, are they inserted into the cake? How do I make sure they don't topple over? Then for the turrets - do you think I should start with a kind of solid fondant cone shape, and then cover it in little circle shapes? Only thing is, maybe that would make the pillars top-heavy?

Anyway, sorry to bombard you with questions. Any advice would be very much appreciated.

Pauline

Hi Pauline, I have done a castle cake. I followed Lindy Smith's Castle cake which has in her Celebrate with a cake book. She also uses pastillage to make her pillars(not sure what you call it! ). If you need the instructions, I'll email them to you. Or the other thing that you can do is just cover the kitchen rolls in sugarpaste to make the pillars. And for the turrets, I used icecream cones and covered them in sugarpaste.

HTH.

Hiya,

Forgot to ask...... what size of cakes do you think would be best? It's not going to be a big party, and I wouldn't want the cake to go to waste. I had thought maybe a 9 and 6 inch, but wasn't sure if the 6" would be big enough for the 3 turrets?

Pauline

Thanks so much Lyndseyb52. I have actually sent you a pm already. Really appreciate the help!

Pauline

I've just sent your instructions, hope I haven't confused you!!

Good Luck and make sure you post a pic when you're done

Lyndsey xx

I agree with Pauline, that is the prettiest castle cake I have ever seen. I like the other one you did too lindsey. Well done.

me too Lyndseyb52! It is too cute and so perfect. Have just added it to my favorites.
It's so easy to miss the really good cakes when you're looking through.
I can't wait to try one!

aww thanks Slush & Rosiepan

It's a really good cake to make if you want to make the decorations in advance to save time. I needed it 3 days after getting back from a trip to Scotland. So I made all the turrets, flowers and butterflies before I went. Then I came back, made the cake and attached all the decorations. It was great having everything done.

Lyndsey xx

Hey all, I'm from Wales and its good to see lots of uk decorators on here.