Wilton Cake Decorating – Brightening the Bakery Scene Since 1929

Any conversation about cake decorating will always bring up the name “Wilton.” The Wilton brand has been around since 1947, when women still wore aprons and most cakes were baked from scratch. In fact, it was about this same time that Betty Crocker/General Mills were making the very first boxed cake mixes available. My, how times have changed! Today, whether you’d like to make a fairy tale castle for your daughter’s birthday or a replica of a dog house for Rover’s graduation from obedience school, Wilton is can help.

Pulled sugar artist Dewey McKinley Wilton founded Wilton Enterprises in 1929. At a time when the stock market was crashing and life was pretty grim, Wilton’s quaint, family-owned cake decorating school brightened the landscape. Over time, the company became a market leader in candy, cookie, bakeware and wedding products, as well as cake decorating.

For cake decorating and baking accessories, Wilton is now number one in 150 countries around the world. Major retailers offer 2,500 Wilton bakeware and food-related products, from instructional manuals to pastry decorating tools. Their products also now include a variety of Wilton home celebration and wedding lines.

With so many products available, it’s hard to imagine that Wilton’s premier designers still develop an average of 400 new consumer products annually – yet they do!

Would you like to create a “Clownin Around” cake for your eight-year-old who wants to join the circus? A local Wilton class can teach you how. Besides the multitude of products to make the decorating life easier, for nearly 80 years Wilton has provided a vast variety of cake decorating classes throughout the United States and Canada. In fact, Wilton classes attract nearly 200,000 enthusiastic students every year from all around the world.

Perhaps you’ve already mastered Cinderella’s Castle and you’d like to enter Wilton’s annual “Your Take on Cake” contest. Every year, thousands vie for the $5,000 prize, which also includes an all-expense-paid trip to attend the two-week Master Course for Cake Decorating at the Wilton School of Cake Decorating in the Chicago suburb of Darien, Illinois.

The Wilton School teaches everything from Introduction to Gum Paste to Marzipan Magic. In fact, it was Wilton’s method instructors who helped introduce the elaborate, European way of cake decorating to North America.

While many cake decorators enjoy the Wilton classroom experience, others prefer learning at their own pace at home with video instruction that allows them to replay as many times as needed, such as with the “Cake Decorating Made Easy!” series.

So what sort of cake would you like to whip up? Is your daughter looking for Mr. Right? Surprise her with a fairy tale castle cake. Does your hubby host a Super Bowl party every year? How about a football pennant cake? With the help of a great class or video, you can be ready for any occasion.

Some like Lorrie have enjoyed the best of both worlds:

“I’ve been decorating cakes since I was 12, and I’m pretty close to 50 now. I’ve taken all the Wilton classes I could take, made lots of cakes, have lots of books and still found lots of new things in the videos.

"They are a great addition to my library. And it’s been wonderful to have access to a teacher that I wouldn’t have had normally. I’ve learned so much that has been helpful. Thanks!”

Lorrie G.

Carleton Place, Ontario