Valentine´s Cupcake Course with La Fábrica & Valen Cupcakes

 Cupcakes are really gaining in popularity here in Spain and now it is possible to participate in cupcake courses even in Ciudad Real.The most recent cupcake course which I took part in, was held in conjunction with La Fábrica, a company which holds various workshops for all manners of crafts and Valen Cupcakes, a self-taught cake decorater, with the topic of Valentine´s Day.

The course started at 11pm and finished at 2pm and was held in La Fábrica. There were about  6 or 7 of us so it was nice to meet other cake fanatics.The course was very professional. Valen,the teacher gave us lots of information and tips about the materials needed, for example the different paper cases, measuring cups and spoons, piping bags and different nozzles, colouring gels, essences available etc. He made some buttercream, which he flavoured with sweet or marshmellow essence and gave us each some buttercream and we coloured our buttercreams various colours with toothpicks.He also gave each of us an icing bag and various nozzles and showed us how  to pipe a rose swirl,stars, leaves and even a rose, depending on which nozzle you used!

We were then let loose to decorate four cupcakes as we wished and unleash our creativity.My mind went blank. First of all, I used my peach buttercream to pipe little swirls. I found that sometimes it wasn´t very neat and was a bit blobby and a bit gappy (which Valen explained was because I was lifting the piping bag too high) so I sprinkled some gold balls over it to try and hide the gaps!!I then had two goes trying to do a rose swirl,one with pink buttercream and the other with white. I was pretty pleased with the end result but wished they were a little neater or more perfect. I topped the pink rose swirl with heart sprinkles and some red edible glitter although I was a bit heavy-handed with it!!Then I piped orange stars around the white swirl and topped it with a single red heart. I also tried my hand at a rose but couldn´t start it off so Valen showed me how to start it off and then I finished off piping the rose. It was not the best rose but for a first attempt,I was quite pleased with it, I then hurriedly piped some green leaves and some swirls in between the leaves. So all in all I was happy with my efforts although I´d have liked a little more time to do the decorating and try and make them neater as I ended up rushing the rose!One girl had not done any decorating before and her cupcakes were much better decorated than mine!!!I really need to practice my piping skills!!

We were given a little booklet with the cupcake and buttercream recipes at the end of the course and a good time was had by all. The course cost 25 euros so was definitely reasonable and well worth the money. I look forward to the next one and would thoroughly reccommend it!