Whether you are a culinary student, pastry chef or home baker looking to start a cake business from your kitchen, there’s a new cake decorating course available this fall from OSU Institute of Technology’s School of Culinary Arts.
Culinary Arts will offer two identical seven-week cake-decorating courses, Sept. 6 through Oct. 20 and Oct. 30 through Dec. 15. Both courses will meet from 6 to 9:30 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
The course is open to current Culinary Arts students as well as the general public.
Chef Gene Leiterman, dean of the School of Culinary Arts, said the course came about after receiving a lot of interest from students as well as from members of the community.
“Our students touch on it in baking class, but some wanted a more advanced cake decorating course. This class allows our current students to have an elective and the community and outsiders to take a course on campus,” Leiterman said. “It’s in the evening to attract people who have jobs and even hobbyist bakers. There may be professionals who want some continuing education. I think the course strengthens our program. It can be credit or noncredit giving.”
Visiting professor Chef Leslie Davis will teach the cake decorating courses. Davis is a pastry instructor at Platt College and a two-time Gold Medal American Culinary Federation winner. She also placed in the top 10 at the National Gingerbread Competition and took third place at the National Signature Pastry Competition.
“She has the experience and the ability to show students the difference between making a cake for family and friends and creating a professional cake,” he said.
The course will cover traditional and contemporary decorating techniques, and students will learn proper application techniques for mediums such as buttercream, royal icing, fondant and gum paste.
Over the course of seven weeks, students will create wedding cakes, special event cakes and sculpted cakes as well as handmade decorations. At the end of the course students must complete a final project— a three-tier wedding cake from design to finished project using methods and techniques taught throughout the course.
And while there are no prerequisites to enroll in the course, Leiterman said the expectation is those in the class will have some basic decorating knowledge.
The course will cost current OSUIT students the usual price per credit hour. For non-degree seeking students, the total cost is $600.
The deadline to enroll in the first cake-decorating course is Tuesday, Sept. 5,. For more information or to enroll in the class, contact Denise Wise at 918-293-5030 or email denise.wise@okstate.edu.