start baking at 15, was 21 when decorated my first elaborated design. But, it's been just 3 years since I re-discovered my love for cake decorating (like chillipepper I'm on my wonderful 50's)

I've learned tons of new techniques and dicovered new materials at a very fast pace. Don't get discouraged, if you enjoy this and have the passion, are never too young or old... put your hands on the cake and let yourself free!

Started baking at 9, cake decorating at 17, 4yr degree in Nutrition early 80's, Wilton Home Courses mid 1980's. My true learning to decorate cakes was when I found Cake Central, it has been a absolute Blessing. I can actually see growth in my decorating skills. I'm 52. Thanks everyone who share so much info and special thanks to Jackie and Heath for starting CC!

I started one year ago this month, i was 29, now 30. Like many, to make birthday cakes for my kids (2 girls almost 2 and 3 years old) so I have MANY more to make. But many saw pics of my cakes and I have been lucky enough to make them all year long I LOVE my new hobby, but dang it is a expensive hobby, lol.

I started making cakes less than a year ago. Last June I was planning the bridal shower for my now sister-in-law. I figured i would just make a sheet cake and write something on it. 2 hours later I had a 3 tiered cake. I fell in love with making cakes that day. For my brothers wedding in july I made 300 cupcakes and built a cupcake stand that everyone fell in love with. I am now 22 and this week alone I have 4 orders for wedding cakes and 6 birthday cakes. Its amazing how quick just making a simple cake can change your life! I have never taken a class or even seen a professional decorate a cake in person. every technique I have figured out has been by trial and error. try until you get it right.

Well, I guess I'm the one who started as the oldest that's posted so far. I took my first class last July (2010) and have been doing it since. I was 58 at the time, am now 59. I actually decorated cakes at an earlier age -- when both boys were younger and I had younger nieces and nephews, but not the kind of decorating I do now. Then it was just making sheet cakes that looked like construction sites, farm yards -- I had a couple nephews who really liked those kinds of cakes and the litte tractors they could keep off of them. My boys just wanted a cake with frosting on it! Now I'm doing flowers, piping and lots of other "attempts". I'm retired and don't plan on turning it into a business, just enjoy doing it for friends and family. And as someone said here already -- it's an expensive hobby, but I love it! Have learned alot from CC and the internet, but still a lot to learn. Thanks to all who are so willing to share their talent and recipes.

I started baking as a very young child. I can't even remember how old I was. One of my cousins started decorating cakes and she taught me how to make royal icing drop flowers and a few other goodies--I was eleven at the time. She eventually opened her own bakery and became quite successful. I became a hobbyist. (when I got married, this cousin made our wedding cake--beautiful five-tiered cake in three flavors, all white with lots of old-school style piping. It was fabulous!)

I didn't get into decorating cakes until I was in my early 30's. The first one I did that actually looked like what it was supposed to was my husband's and my engagement cake--an oblong cake with a small (6"?) square cake on top, frosted white, and with a rainbow going from one end of the cake to the other, complete with a pot of gold that had two hearts in it.

Since then I've done all our family's birthday cakes and one--count 'em, one!--wedding cake. All my recent cake pics are on my Facebook page, and you can definitely see the varying levels of skill as I learned--or forgot!--things along the way.

And speaking of learning, I don't know WHERE I'd be without CC. This place is the BEST!

I took my first class 22 years ago but it kinda dropped off. Last February I retook the first Wilton class and the next 3.

My mom always made cool cakes for our birthdays when I was a kid, so I wanted to do the same for my kids. My first cake was for my son's first birthday four years ago, when I was 31. I started doing it more seriously not quite a year ago when a friend of a friend asked me if I'd consider making cakes for her kids' birthday party. I started my business just a few months later. Luckily, that was easy to do with the cottage laws in Ohio. As a stay at home mom, I'm so happy to have found something that I enjoy, that uses my brain, and that I have all to myself!

I've always enjoyed baking (and cooking to for that matter) I've been making b-day cakes for my kids and now grandkids for years. But I guess the real decorating started in March last year when I discovered fondant and made a hello kitty cake for my niece. I sent it to work with my daughter (who works with my niece) and started getting requests from her co-workers. It just snowballed from there.

I'm having a blast and I can't even begin to tell you how much I've learned from all you other CC'rs on this site!

Oh and since we're telling our age...I'm 46

Good luck with the surgery Cakeyouverymuch! Hope it goes well and you are back to baking and caking very soon. Didn't mean to make you feel 'ancient'. I've discovered a lot of people who have hit their fifties and discovered a talent they wish they'd discovered years earlier. Better late than never eh?

CP xxx

I think I was probably 13 when I started getting really interested in baking. I became obsessed with the food network challenges, and cake boss, and all the baking shows. Then around 14 years old I started decorating cakes. I am 16 now and am still obsessed. I make probably 5 or 6 cakes a month sometimes. I really love to do it, and hope to one day have my own bakery!

My aunt always used to say that i was the only 8 year old she knew that could make complete thanksgiving dinner lol. I have baked and cooked as long as i can remember but only really became interested in cake deco since i became a mommy 4 years ago and only serious about it the last year...

I taught myself baking at 12 and started decorating at 13. Well....if you count the Easy Bake Oven...5. One day, when I was 12, I picked up one of my mom's old Bettty Crocker Cookbooks and started playing with recipes.

I started cooking at 9.

The earliest I can remember is 5 or 6... my aunt's a caker and I was totally drawn to it.. then on and off (maybe 3-4 cakes a year)... until a year ago when I had the opportunity to make a wedding cake as a gift and when researching found Cake Central ... and the rest is history =)

I wonder what my 2 year old will say.. when I'm working on a cake she can't stay out of the kitchen... She loves rolling scrap pieces of fondant with a little rolling pin and cutting out shapes with cutters...

I was 26 when I first started doing something other than just putting frosting straight on and nothing else. As for researching and learning the ins and outs of cake decorating, I was 27 1/2. (I'm now 29.)

I've always cooked and baked, just not cakes per se. I took my first Wilton class in November of 2007 when I was 46 so I could make my daughter's wedding cake. I was immediately hooked and took all 4 Wilton courses plus a generic gumpaste flower class that my instructor did. I made my dd a 4 tier, fondant covered wedding cake with gumpaste Stargazer lilies just 6 months after that first class. I was such a newbie that I had NO idea of all the things that could have gone wrong ! I had cake angels watching over me that week because nothing did.

I was almost 52 yrs when I started cake classes at "Michael's" I am now 53 and I am opening my own business, a non-profit cakery to support charities that fight child prostitution. You are young!

So I have to chime in... I started after throwing a bridal shower for one of my girlfriends when I was about 25. I had decided I didnt want a typical sheet cake from the grocery store... I wanted a "mini-wedding cake" (which at least in my area, I had never seen anyone do) So I contacted a local bakery and ordered a 8" 6" stacked cake. When I picked up the cake I said to myself I paid What? for This? I can do this myself! So I took what was available at the time "Wilton" classes... made a few wedding cakes for family and then life, kids, work got in the way... fast forward, I am almost 40 (yikes) and in the past couple of years have been more obsessed than ever. Sometimes I feel like I wish I hadnt dropped the hobby all those years back and now I think maybe I am too old to get realyl, really good. But I know thats not true, I have actually improved drastically the past couple years and have learned tons of new techniques... cant wait to continue growing. All of you and your stories are even more inspiring!

I was 19 when I started, but stopped for a few years. But now I'm back into it and love it even more.

I have been decorating for 45 years this year. Started when I was
12 years old with a Wilton catalog. Taught myself everything.
After five years when I was 17, I attended the Wilton class in Chicago,
just to get the certificate. Didn't really learn anything new because I
already knew it but enjoy going and meeting the people. Especially
enjoyed having Martha Wilton Ellison and her brother Wesley Wilton
as instructors.

It's nice to see such a broad age range - I started making cakes 18 months ago, never been interested before that and now feel withdrawal symptoms if I haven't got one in the pipeline! I'm 58 next, feel 38 most days and SO wish I had started this so much earlier - the pleasure it gives me cannot be measured

I enrolled in a cake decorating class in 1976, and I never stopped. I will be 63 years young this year....my 35th year decorating cakes. This business has brought me so much happiness and joy.....I cannot imagine my life without decorating a cake. I was selling my cakes immediately after finishing my cake decorating class. In the early days, I did around 100 weddings a year and about 350 party cakes a year. 16 years ago, I decided to just do wedding cakes and one year I did 200 wedding cakes. About 3 years ago, I started doing "party" cakes again as well as continuing my wedding cakes. I am always learning something new. I am always being challenged with new ideas from clients. I thank GOD every day for this wonderful talent he has given to me. I plan to continue creating cakes well into my 80's. I will decorate cakes until I can't move any more. Until then, you will find me dancing on my turntable.

im about to be 24 and i started at 21

I started one year ago at the age of 30. Well that's when I took the 4 courses at Michael's and I started decorating for fun about April last year.

I started decorating when I was 10. I was teaching one of my mother's friends to crochet. When I went over for her first lesson, she was decorating a cake. We decided to swap hobbies. After that, my grandmother bought me my first wilton magazine and decorating kit. I was hooked. So mostly self taught out of a wilton magazine. I finally took my first class at age 26, then was asked to teach for wilton.

Then I found gumpaste and fondant, and the rest is history. I'm now 44 and still going strong.

I was 35. My first decorated cake was for my daughter's 2nd birthday when I decided that I wanted something better than the grocery store cake we had for her 1st birthday. She will be 14 this year.

well after I've enjoyed reading all of your posts, I came to realize that i haven't shared my bit of the story with you. I've actually started cooking at the age of 11 when we came to the US (I'm from UAE) so that my father finishes his higher studies. I've been cooking since then passionately but I haven't been "interested" in cake decorating or baking desserts for that matter because it intimidates me. I started doing cake pops a year ago and stopped. i just didn't find the challenge and the passion I needed to sustain making them. so one day, when it was the time for my son's 3rd birthday, I decided to plan the party on my own and bake the cake too. I did a few practice cakes to get me on the right track and boy was I pleased. It came out okay but I loved every moment of it. I did a 2 8" layer cakes to match Ben 10's theme with a nutella cream for a filling and buttercream icing. I even made my first royal icing cake topper transfer too. It was an amazing experience. I haven't had any training in this area just videos and articles from here and there but I'm hooked for life!! I'll be starting my wilton courses soon so I can't wait.

Thank you all for sharing your stories with me. It's truly a wonderful place. Thank you CC for bringing us closer.

note: keep those stories coming in.

I just finished my last Wilton class in January and I'm 55, but lovin' it!

I bought a really pretty cake for my daughter's 16th birthday party a little over a year ago. I took one look at it and thought it would be fun to try. I haven't had any classes although I'd love to, but they are not available in our small town. I just learn from Cake Central and surf the web if I need any help. I'm 48 and just found my passion. My friends and family are amazed with each cake I make. Come to think of it, so am I! hahaha! I know that it would sound silly to say this to anyone other than Cake Central friends, but caking has changed my life! I'm now known as the lady who makes amazing cakes! Two year ago if anyone had told me that this would be what I was doing now I would have thought they were crazy!