Ready to sweeten up your skills? Explore the sugar art of cake decorating with Jenny McCoy as your expert guide. In this comprehensive beginner’s class, you’ll learn how to bake and construct a variety of single-tiered frosted cakes with professional-quality results. Along the way, discover essential tools, materials and techniques, including fondant and buttercream, sugar flowers, piping, hand modeling, and much more.
Class Sessions
Introduction to Cake Decorating
4:39
Ground yourself in the fundamentals of cake decorating as Jenny discusses the elements that make up a decorated cake. Discover a few basic tools, plus the timeline for making your first cake!
How to Bake a Cake
18:51
Get right into action by learning to make a yellow butter-based cake. Find out how to prepare the pans, mix the batter, and bake it to a beautiful golden brown. You can use the same recipe to make a chocolate version, too!
Making Swiss Meringue Buttercream
12:07
Jenny shows you how to make her favorite decorating frosting: Swiss meringue buttercream. It's a step up from the traditional one-bowl, powdered sugar-and-butter variation.
Constructing a Single-Tier Cake
52:14
Trim your baked cakes so they're uniform and level every time. Find out how to stack up the layers, fill them with frosting, and frost the entire cake with a crumb coat. You'll add a final coat for a sharp-edged flat finish that will get you ready to start decorating.
Buttercream: Textured Finishes
7:13
Discover three techniques for texturing cakes with buttercream: horizontal ridge, vertical stripe and a simple-yet-beautiful brushed finish. These finishes are not only beautiful and on trend, they're also great at covering up anything that's less than perfect.
Buttercream: Preparing to Pipe
23:18
Set yourself up for piping success by learning to color buttercream for endless customization. Jenny shows you how to fill a piping bag with buttercream and pipe a line of frosting.
Buttercream: Simple Designs & Borders
45:53
Once your buttercream is colored and in a pastry bag, practice making a few simple designs with two different tips: round and star. You'll see how to turn your designs into borders.
Buttercream: Piped Roses & Leaves
18:51
Continue to work on your piping skills by learning to pipe the classic buttercream rose with Jenny's step-by-step instructions. Don't worry if you mess up; since these beauties are away from your cake they can go right back in the frosting bowl.
Fondant: Handling & Coloring
16:11
Conquer the pliable sugar dough known as fondant as Jenny shares her best tips for handling, storing and coloring to make gorgeous, professional-looking decorated cakes.
Fondant: Rolling Out & Covering a Cake
35:16
It's important to give yourself a pristine, clean canvas for decorating. In this lesson, learn how to roll out fondant and drape it beautifully over your cakes. Jenny will also walk you through some common problems and explain how to fix them.
Fondant: Cutouts
23:16
See how to make a variety of fondant decorations from just a few simple cutters and place them securely as you make a cute and easy "Happy Birthday" cake. Plus, learn Jenny's secret no-stress method for writing messages on cakes.
Fondant: 3-D Roses
39:17
Here, Jenny introduces sugar flowers, then goes over a few basic techniques for hand-modeling petals to create a classic fondant rose.
What's Next: Design Ideas & Inspiration
3:43
In this final lesson, find out how to mix and match the above techniques to create new designs and cakes for any theme or occasion!
Your Instructor
Jenny McCoy
Jenny McCoy is a pastry chef with more than 10 years' experience working in some of America's finest kitchens. She uses classic techniques to create inventive desserts, many of which are featured in her book, "Desserts for Every Season." Jenny's philosophy on baking is simple: By combining the best ingredients available and a personal creative touch, anyone can make refined recipes and original pastries with ease. A truly approachable expert, Jenny offers detailed lessons that are both inviting and inspiring.
Download and print this PDF as a helpful supplement to your Class video.
Bonus Materials available for download after purchase.
FAQs
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Every Class has a free Preview video you can watch, to give you a flavor of the Instructor and the skills or project that will be covered. In addition, the Overview tab includes a thorough written description of the Class. And finally, each Class Session has a brief written summary of the content in that Session, including the length of each Session video. You will get a good feel for the Class content by reviewing these resources.
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