Wilton Classes Vs Pastry College Classes
Decorating By Misshash79 Updated 10 Jan 2017 , 3:57am by cakingandbaking
Hi all,
I'm a self taught baker and would love to learn more in terms of decorating.
I'm debating whether to enroll on the local wilton classes offered at Michaels or one of the leading colleges that offer cake decorating classes. Price difference is quite a lot. Wilton classes are 25 dollars while college classes are 195.
I would love to take my passion to the level of making it my job but at this point looking at the market I'm not sure if I will even find a place in the market. My work can be seen on Instagram @ oui_delights.
Would love advice
Depends on what you expect to learn I've taken classes from a number of places, from Wilton to CIA.
The difference is Wilton classes are taught by people who have turned a passion into a business. They are not necessarily professionally trained. Everything is geared to the home baker, designed to sell you Wilton products. Even the decorating books are Wilton. it's not to say you won't learn, but you will never get to use fine fondant like Carmaker Massa, or learn what feuilletine is. Wilton instructors are required to follow the Wilton program and use only Wilton products. That said, if you are a beginner, it's really a good place to start.
By contrast, professional classes are taught by pastry chefs who have graduated from a professional pastry program and have worked for restaurants and/or catering/event companies. Classes for the non-professional teach both basic and advanced techniques, including commercial production methods. Sometimes there's an expectation that the students already know the fundamentals. In a cake class at CIA, a student was aghast that the recipe called for 6 pounds of flour. When she asked the instructor to provide a recipe for a single cake, he looked at her and said, "just do the math, surely you can do the math." I thought that was pretty crappy of him.
in Wilton, you'll be expected to bring your own cake. In professional schools, you bake, to learn different cake types, or the school provides cakes for you to decorate. Plus they have two or more student interns to help with all aspects of the class. The interns are in the professional pastry program.
Nearly every professional school provides refreshments and a meal if it's a long class.
I'd recommend writing a list of objectives, what you would like to learn. Then talk to the coordinators of the programs to assess which one meets your needs.
Carma Massa is the brand of fondant ;autocorrect makes up its own language:)
siftandwhisk makes some good points but I don't agree w/all of what was said.
Wilton classes are taught by someone who just finished their classes and went through a short (3 day?) 'training' which is basically nothing more than a repeat of all the classes they just took just that there is emphasise on making *SURE* the Wilton way is used and how to sell product.
College class might or might not be taught by a professiona or pastry chef. I did a couple of yrs teaching college class and never went to any classes but Wilton - Oh, by then I had taken a few individual classes from some of the 'big names' in decorating. I basically taught Wilton classes & added some other things I had learned along the way from the big names like what one could sub instead of buying the Wilton product usually used. For other college classes I did a 3 wk course on making just b'cream flowers and another on figure piping things like that.
That's why I said it depends so much on the instructor for either!
https://m.facebook.com/OuiDelights/
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If you want to improve in specific areas and already have a good knowledge of cake decorating, consider Craftsy classes. They frequently go on sale, and you can take classes on basically anything cake related!
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