Before I try the cake decorating masterclass through "How To Cake It"

What am I learning? Cake decorating!

Why am I learning it? Because my usual self-taught method isn't cutting it.

What technology am I using to learn it? The cake decorating masterclass offered through How To Cake It which is a combination of video and text instruction delivered through a LMS called Thinkific Academy. 

Why did I choose those tools? I chose this because a lot of the techniques will be much easier to understand while watching a video demonstration and recipes are easier for me to follow when they are written. 

As soon as I read about assignment 2 I knew what I wanted to do for my self-directed learning challenge. I am an avid baker and have spent a lot of time over the pandemic improving my skills. I learned how to make macarons (what a challenge that was) and I started decorating sugar cookies (which I am pretty good at) and of course, I baked a couple cakes. My cakes (while tasting delicious) are admittedly not nearly as pretty or professional looking as the rest of my baking. So far, I have just been self-taught.  I follow recipes and have spent time experimenting and I feel like I have been overall successful with that method for most of my baking. Despite my best efforts, I just haven't been able to get my cakes to be level or achieve that beautiful bakery cake look. My cakes still look homemade. I'm not personally a fan of fondant cakes, so I am determined to learn the proper way to ice a cake with buttercream. 

Here are a few examples of cakes I have baked previously. 

As I mentioned, they taste great, but they look homemade. 

Since I have an interest in baking I follow many baking accounts on Instagram. The algorithm picked up on that and of course, now I get ads for various baking-related things. I started to get ads for "How To Cake It" a few years ago. How To Cake It (HTCI) offers live tutorials and online courses for all things baking. One of the online (asynchronous) courses they offer is a cake decorating masterclass course by the founder of how to cake it, Yolanda Glamp. The course promises to teach fundamental cake decorating skills through 13 step-by-step tutorials to students of all skill levels. The branding was bright and fresh, and the website is easy to navigate and user-friendly so I felt confident that the course would be well structured.

I gained access to the course immediately after registering. It was nice to not have a delay. Once logged in, the Learning Management System (LMS) was a good fit for this course. The course content is a combination of videos and written instruction. The interface was easy to navigate and included progress indicators.