Last week I ventured up to great state of Illinois for a Wilton Food Blogger Workshop with a handful of my fellow fabulous food bloggers (Whew, trying saying that five times fast).  If you aren’t familiar with Wilton, they are the resident experts on the art of cake decorating and let me just say, they do a fantastic job.

To kick off the workshop, we were introduced to buttercream piping ( I finally learned the art of leaf and shell piping) by the amazingly talented Sandy Folsom.

Here are a few of my attempts at piping shapes and lines.  What do you think?  Did I challenge my inner cake decorator?

We toured the design center, where they’re already planning out the new trends for 2013.  There is seriously impressive stuff going on in there.  So impressive in fact, that we weren’t allowed to take pictures.  You’ll just have to trust me on this one.

After wandering through the design center, we made our way to the photography studio where I witnessed a prop room that would make any food photographer smile with delight.

This was followed by lunch and then a lesson in the art of fondant.  Considering I haven’t done much work (ever) with fondant, I learned a bunch from this little session.  Here’s the results from one our activities.  Not too shabby if you ask me.

We finished up the day with a friendly little cake decorating competition.  I reveled at the talent in that room.  There are some bloggers that seriously know how to decorate a cake.  My team mustered through and came up with a respectable result.

So respectable, in fact, that we won best design at the awards ceremony that night. You can send all future cake decorating orders to…

… just kidding.  You don’t want me to decorate your cake just yet.  Trust me on this one.

I conclude this post with a heartfelt thank you to Wilton for putting together a top notch blogger’s workshop.  I left with a deeper appreciation for cake decorating, a handful of new friends, and a massive stash of new toys to play with (look out, this blog may take a turn for the beautifully sweet in the upcoming months).  It was an experience I won’t soon forget.

Competing cakes on display at the awards ceremony.  Photo courtesy of Wilton.