Just Wondering...how Did You Start With Cake Decorating
Decorating By flayvurdfun Updated 11 May 2006 , 1:13am by angelas2babies
I have always loved to cook and bake, and I guess I thought I wasnt good enough to decorate cakes when I was younger, so I never really thought about it much again until last year, I was at Hobby Lobby and saw that they offered cake decorating classes so I started thinking about how much I would love to learn so I started taking the Wilton classes . I am sort of slow and I am catching on slowly I start course 2 saturday I am so excited . I hace been practicing on making roses and I cant wait to show the instructor how much better Ive gotten on making them . At first I thought maybe I am just too old to start this but I quickly realized its not about age its about the love of cake decorating .
I have always baked and loved doing it. My mom had me in my high chair as a baby watching her, and standing next to her on a chair as I was older. She never really decorated cakes, but always baked. When my first son was turning one, I decided that I was going to make his cake. It was a dump truck cake that's in my pictures, and it took me almost 13 hours to do. I've never bought a cake for their birthdays, and the mom's who come to their party's usually come to see what cake I've come up with before they go out to the party. I just finished my Wilton 1 course last night, and can make roses now, and can't wait til June when Course 2 starts! Doesn't hurt that I'm bringing in some extra $$$ now doing it!
About 2 years ago, I needed some "me" time (SAHM) so I took a few classes. They weren't Wilton, but it was similar. I had DH take the cakes to work and eventually someone asked to buy a cake from me. Word of mouth is an amazing thing! Within the next few months, I plan to have a "legal" home bakery!
I caught the cake decorating bug from my mom. I started making cakes for my boyfriend (now my hubby) to impress him. Now I'm making those cakes for my husband, parents anniversary, and fellow co-workers bdays. I just know the basics, star tip is my friend. I just started a cake decorating class. I really want to learn how to make roses. I just did my first figure, a clown...and they turned out cute. Tonight at class, learn how to make flowers. 
The first cake I ever decorated was about a year and a half ago for my nieces first birthday. Her mother was supposed to do the cake, but she was having a bad day, got pi%#ed off and quit. Of course I took over because my niece had to have a cake. The only thing I didn't do was ice it. There is a picture of it in my photos. It is the M&M cake. I really enjoyed doing that even though it turned horrible.
My mother has been decorating our cakes for years, but finally decided to take the Wilton classes. I decided to take them with her since I had just quit working. I loved it so much! Since then we have taken all 3 courses.
For us it was something that we love to do and we get to spend a lot of quality time together. Decorating cakes has brought us so much closer together, and we both love doing it. Now we find excuses to make cakes.
When I was five I was totally in love with Michael Jackson ( I know I know...LOL) anyhow......my mom always bought our cakes from the grocery store...well, they told my mom they could NOT do a Michael Jackson themed cake...so my mom being an awesome baker, baked me a cake....however she wasn't so gifted in the decorating dept. however she improvised. She frosted the cake (in the 9x13 pyrex dish) pink which of course was my favorite color(being a girl and all) and then she sat her hand on the cake lightly and traced around her own hand with more pink frosting then filled the outline with silver dragees and wrote "Happy Birthday Tina" on the cake............I was soooooooooooooo happy, to this day I say that was the BEST birthday cake I ever had (only one anybody ever MADE for me) and I will never forget it....well, when My oldest was turning one (now he's 7) I decided.......I want him to have that memory of the best cake ever no matter how rediculous it looks!!!! That's when it all started, I fell in love with it.....however it really sat on the back burner, just made my kids' cakes and about a yr. ago I found this website and got back into it and now other people are asking for my cakes, which I'm more than happy to oblige them with!!!
Unlike others, I started out of disappointment in my wedding cake. We paid a ton of money for a cake that was very plain and didn't taste that great. So I figured that I could do better than that, bought some supplies, and started. That was 6 years ago and my love of sugar and decorating has never stopped even though my baking has been on hold for months here and there. I just wish I had more time to practice and hope that I can pass this love on to my twin girls when they are old enough. 
When I was young, we used to stay at my grandmothers once in a while for a day or even overnight. She liked to decorate cakes, using simple styles and pretty basic techniques. I liked doing it, but did not think much about it as a hobby or otherwise.
MANY years later, I had my little girl and wanted to make her birthday cakes, so I picked up some tips and a bag and took a stab at it. Everyone got so excited when they saw it I thought, "Wow, and I have no resources, imagine what could be out there."
When I saw there were classes forming, I signed up and had fun but could not really get too excited with a full-time job, etc., there is NO time.
When the Course II offering came along months later, I signed up just to get out of the house and do something for 'me'.
Now, I am having so much fun, especially having found this site, I am going to start offering my services and see if I can't drum up enough business to quit my day job eventually.
Thanks everybody for bringing so much creativity and excitement to my otherwise run-of-the-mill existence!
I think this is an interesting topic. It is nice to see how everyone got started in this. My story is not as long as some others but here is it. I have always made my four sons birthday cakes, as well as cakes for family and friends. I always wanted to take the classes but for some reason or another it got put off everytime. My sister and I finally took them from Dec. of 05 to Feb of 06. I loved the classes. I learned so much that I did not know that I could do. I have even been able to sell three cakes so far to people for St. Patricks Day and two birthdays. I am still learning alot from this site and from reading all the cake books I can get my hands on. And I have more than enough willing taste testers with my three boys that are still at home and all of their friends.
I just recently started, but it has always been in my past. My mom, to make extra money for the family made wedding cakes. I remember there was always bowls of icing and icing roses in our fridge. I remember sneaking spoonfuls and eating the roses. But, I never wanted to learn to do it my self. When she quit baking she gave me all of her tips and stuff. I promptly tossed it in a box in the closet until my friend's daughter started decorating - she went to Johnson & Wales for school - I gave her the entire box of stuff.
Fast forward 5 years - my friend was now making cakes for my daughter adn I loved the way they looked, but still not interest myself. About 4 years later while I was waiting on my daughter to finish a class at Michaels, I saw the signs posted for the Wilton I class. I figured, what the heck, I could try it. Now I'm hooked. I love the baking and decorating. Sadly I"m on Weight Watchers so I try to limit how many spoonfuls of Icing I sneak (just like when I was a kid).
dara
This is a great thread!!!!
I was 14 years old when I went to my first wedding and the bride had a beautiful cake that was covered in red roses. I was amazed how beautiful it was. Then I went to another wedding a few weeks later and the bride had a dumby cake that had to go to three different receptions. (She was a world dancer). I couldn't get them out of my head, they were so beautiful. I didn't reolize at the time that my mom was friends with the only cake decorator in the small town that I grew up in. I told my mom that I wanted to learn how to decorate and she said, "Oh that's nice". I didn't think she heard me, but about a month or so later, she said that her friend was gonna teach a cake decorating class and that my mom convinced her friend to let me in the class. (the age cut off was 1
. It was a summer school class at the local high school. I went once a week for four weeks and I was the youngest student in the class and I did a horrable job at decorating. But I got the hang of it real fast and my family ate cake every week! They didn't mind. My brothers were more than willing to eat everything I made.
By the time I was 16 I was making all kinds of cakes and I was getting orders from everywhere. I entered a cake decorating contest that the high school put on and I won first place! The cake was raffled off and my mothers friend's son won the cake! My cake decorating teacher was impressed. I did a horn of plenty and veggies out of royal icing and put it on a rectangle cake base. I wish I had a picture of it. It came out of one of the old Wilton cake books. I think 1977. I can't remember now.
I have been decorating for over 30 years and learned advanced decorating on my own. My smallest cake was a six inch round that was covered in string work. My largest cake was my daughters wedding cake of a 16", 14", 12", 10", 8", 6". With two 10" side cakes. That I have a picture of which I plan on posting when I get my cake pictures on a cd so I can up load.
I have worked in a few bakeries over the years. But my dream is to start a full business with just cakes.
I needed to go to school and get a job that would support my children, so I became a nurse. I love being a nurse, but I'd rather do cakes!
Mine started out when I baked a bunch of stuff for a hobby showcase at our MOPS group. A friend asked if I could make decorated cookies so I gave it a try and soon had orders from lots of other moms for cookies for parties. Then the church asked me to do my first cake - a four tier wedding cake with two sheet cakes. Talk about stress!!! It just went on from there - I love to do it, and whenever a cake goes anywhere I end up with orders from people who were at the event and then from their friends and relatives simply by word of mouth. I get stressed every time a cake order comes in for something I've never done before, but how else am I going to learn? One of my favorite things to do is go to the cake supply store and just stand in there and look and pick things out. As I've said in other posts I'm either very happy when doing a cake, or very mad, but it is definitely a passion.
my cake decorating started when me and my BF went to Banff national park for our 1 year anniversary. they have a bunch of chocolate/candy shops, and i REALLLY wanted to work in a chocolate store, like making it, decorating it, all that, well i realized that in the city i live in , there isnt much opurtunity for that, so i started thinking about what else i would like to decorate, and then i decided cakes would be AWESOME!!!! and so i went to micheals, priced everything out, and then GOT started... and im one of those people that jump RIGHT in and buy everything, no matter what.. and this is the actual first thing /hobby i can see me doing again ALOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and ever since i started ( i started learning here on CC, u guys were my VERY FIRST teachers!!!!!!) everything just came rather natural and i havent stoped since...
I LOVE CAKE DECORATING!!!!!!!!! and my BF refers to me as a crazy cake lady... oh well, hes suportive at least!!!!!!!!! 
Well my cake decorating story begins when i was ten. I saw a cake that was a hamburger cake in my mom's cook book ( it was a newspaper clipping). I asked her, "Mommy? Could you make this cake for me?" Strange enough, the cake turned into the classic present cake with store bought icing, skittles/M&M's and fruit roll up ribbon. I picked it back up when I was fourteen. Went to a friend's house who had just taken the class. She pulled out some icing and showed me how to make certain things. Was able to pick up most of it... Then I asked the "big question" "Could you show me how to make a rose??" Before then, i didn't even know there was such a thing as a coupler! I didn't even look at what she was doing... Just followed her directions as she was making her own. Then and there...I made one of my best roses ever! Few days later, she invited me over to make ROYAL ICING ROSES! THAT was a REALLY bad experience...the roses kept melting. Few weeks later, my mom and i took the first Wilton class. From there, we kept going until we completed all three classes. (Funny, when we made the final Wilton cake for #3, it was the day before my 15th birthday. All the ladies there were trying to make my mom feel bad for making my own cake, but all i wanted to do was DECORATE!!! ) BTW, i'm still fifteen and still decorating!
sorry so long...
Laroux
I started decorating cakes 5/20/05 after a traumatic brain injury (auto accident 12/04). The area of my brain that was damaged processes vision.
I no longer watch TV, drive outside of my neighborhood or read for pleasure.
I was going stir crazy every evening with nothing to do after work. I started praying to be shown what to do with my time. After several months I started dreaming about cakes. I never took more than 30 min. to ice a cake in the past. Now these elaborate cakes were in my dreams every night so I started
drawing them in the mornings when I woke. I have never done the same cake twice and new ideas for all different types of decorations are always popping into my head. I now make bees, dragon flies and faries wings out of gelatin instead of rice paper & piping gel. I won't take a class because someone might tell me "that can't be done", I don't want that in my head. Anything is possible.
Well my 14 year old granddaughter wanted to take classes and she had to have a adult take it with her so I did. I had more fun then she did so we have been making cakes together ever sense then. We get to spend time together and that is a good thing.
I started when my mother showed me how to do simple leaves and flowers for our birthday cakes. She learned in college studying for her degree in Home Economics at Cornell. Anyway, when I was pregnant with my oldest son back in 1976 I took a course through the Adult Ed dept at the local high school. I was pretty good at it and sold a couple of cakes. Then kids and career took over. In 2002 I lost my job because of pain from fibromyalgia and was left with hours to fill. I saw a poster earlier this year at my local Michael's and the rest is history. Decorating actually strengthens my hands and when it gets painful I can rest for a while and then go back to it. It makes me feel productive again.
Great thread.
I just started my little addiction a few months ago...in February. My little baby was about to turn 1, and I wanted to do something special for her celebration and decided to make a cake. I discovered this site and the Wilton classes at Michaels...and now I am officially hooked. I just can't stop dreaming of cakes now and admiring the talent here!!!!
Angie
Quote by @%username% on %date%
%body%