Last week 8 of us attended a Mums Who Bake Cupcake Decorating Course in Milton Keynes. Vicki Hoskins, the founder of Mums Who Bake, started running the courses as a way to demonstrate the amazing cake decorating equipment she sells in her online shop, but the courses have proved so popular in their own right that she is finding herself booked up months in advance.
When we arrived we were each presented with a box of 12 plain cupcakes for us to decorate. We were then taught about the different types of icing – glace, fondant and buttercream – and how to colour and pipe it. Then we were let loose on the vast array of cutters, icing pens, edible glitter, coloured balls and pearlescent spray and given free reign to decorate our cakes however we wished. Vicki was partly trialling her Christmas Decorating Course on us, so the finished results were a mixture of Christmas/Kiddy/Wedding style cakes because everyone just wanted to have a go at everything that was on offer. So the finished result was 8 boxes of rather eclectic looking cakes which looked surprisingly professional – and tasted absolutely divine!
It was such a lovely way to spend an evening with friends, doing something creative without little hands getting in the way! It also gave me a great sense of achievement, coming away with a box of beautifully decorated cakes. I love baking, but I normally opt for no nonsense home baking without the frills – but it boosted my cooking confidence knowing that I can now make the things I bake look pretty too.
I can’t recommend Vicki’s courses highly enough and am looking forward to going back to do one of the specialist courses, now that I know what I’m letting myself in for, so I can come away with an even more presentable box of cakes!
NB. For those of you on Twitter, if you want to put names to faces, going rouns the table left to right is Pippa (non-tweeter), Sarah @Ivy_House, Susie @susie72, Sue @pulsescreening, Helen @mumstheboss, Lesley (non-tweeter) and Sam @mumstheboss. So now you know!
