Lesson 1: The Easy Stuff

So, I get to class at 9.20am like I was told and there are already 2 students there. Crystal (the teacher) introduces me to the other two ladies who are home baking teachers. But I get the first hint that Crystal will be doing basic translation services. Cool! I’ll figure out the rest myself.

I get a name tag with my name in English and Korean and Crystal sits down with me to go through a list of tools that I will need and those that I have the option to buy if I don’t have the equivalent. I brought the tools that I had already and we compared them with the list and also the Wilton products. Immediately, I can see the difference in the quality of the Wilton products. For example, my angled spatula that I bought from Bangsan market is a lot more bendy compared to the Wilton one which is pretty solid. Crystal pointed out to me that when I am icing a cake, the weakness of the no-brand spatula may cause unevenness when I am spreading the buttercream. Comparing the two, I must say I can see what she means!

I also got 4 Wilton Bags (two 12”, 14” and 16). I already had some bags but I was advised that the Wilton bags were cotton based and better. Bet you’re wondering how when the other bags look similar and are cheaper. Well firstly, the Wilton piping bags are made from cotton then covered with a waterproof film and this helps to reduce the amount of heat that is transferred from your hand to the buttercream (which can cause the buttercream to split) and at the same time, I found it gives me more control when putting pressure on the bag to squeeze out the buttercream. Having said that, the difference with the local brand is not that significant so I wouldn’t throw them away and get the Wilton ones just yet.

I used the disposable bags mainly because I am just too lazy to wash the bags! Grease is just so difficult to get off but now that I know the benefits of the better quality bags, I think I will save the plastic disposable ones for cooking instead of baking. We also had to get 2 sets of gloves each to ensure we work in a hygienic environment and also to create another barrier between the heat from our hands and the piping bag. I used to use plastic (see a trend here??) gloves before but now I have been converted to cotton gloves – the sort you see construction workers use here. Sexy eh?

I also got a whole new set of 24 Wilton nickel covered tips including a tip saver case. They are so shiny compared to the no-brand ones I get elsewhere! I had bought some Wilton tips before but I only got the ones where I couldn’t find the equivalents here like the 1M, 1B and the 313 drop flower tip. The irony is that Wilton tips are made in Korea but their sale is so tightly controlled that you can only get them from an official Wilton store. Before contacting them, I didn’t know that I could get them in Korea so had to buy them from overseas and pay through the nose for postage. And now you know, so if you are looking for Wilton products check out www.wiltondeco.co.kr

One benefit of the Wilton tips especially in the class environment is that the all fit the standard coupler. If you buy the locally made ones, many of them are of a larger size so you can’t just change the tip even though you are using the same icing colour. This is a real pain when you have to squeeze all the BC out, push out the tip, put the new one in and then refill the bag. Talk about wasting time! So if you aren’t fuss about this, then you’ll be paying half to a third less of the price. (Local tips range from KRW700 to KRW1000 and can be found in most of the baking stores in Bangsan Market).

After we sorted out the tools that we needed, we got down to business. Crystal went through the Wilton Cake Decorating Course Book I and would translate in bursts which was easy for me to follow. The rest I could read myself as the book is in English (phew!)

First we learned to pipe stars with Open Star tip #16. How difficult could piping stars be right? WRONG. There is a technique to EVERYTHING as I was quickly finding out! A size #16 tip should create stars of a certain size and at first I was being to careful about how much buttercream to squeeze out so my teacher kept telling me, “More volume.” After practicing with the #16 tips we moved onto the round tips and played around with the size #2 and #4 as well as petal tips to create a ribbon and ruffles for the edges of a cake. We also practiced with a drop flower tip to learn how to pipe simple flowers for the heart shaped cake we decorated.

The best thing was having the teacher hold your hand and guide you. It really made a difference as I could now see how much movement is required in the wrist and how much pressure I should be putting on the bag. The angle is important too so the practicing was very important.

Once we were done practicing which took about 2 hours, we moved onto the actual cakes itself. We were given sponge cakes and shown how to make layers out of them and put buttercream and jam in between the layers. The first cake was a bunny cake that we had to ice using the open star tip. It’s a small cake and it still took some time. At first I thought I’d be clever and pipe all along the bottom edge until Crystal caught me at it. Then she told me to do it in sections to create uniformity to the rows and columns which made it look a lot neater. Not like someone who went crazy with the piping bag.

Here are some pictures of the cakes we made. The bunny was just adorable! I almost didn’t want to cut it… almost but the need to taste it was greater. The heart cake was such a pleasure to do. We started running short of time towards to end so I had to pipe the flowers in a slightly haphazard fashion but I think in the end it looked like it was meant to look a little all over the place.

Can’t wait for the next lesson!