Sweet skills from Henry Sison Culinary School

Let's talk about something sweet today. I've been blogging about my food trips around Manila's Chinatown lately that I feel we should clear our palettes with my "sweet" experience from the Henry Sison Culinary School. 

I've always wanted to try and get my hands dirty(?!) woops, I think the better words are ---> whiten with flour and my apron fully dusted with sugar while I learn how to bake and create wonderful edible fondant artworks. ^_^. 

To start off my journey to the world of fondants, I picked to attend their cupcake workshop taught by Chef Aggy Villabona. 

Banana cupcakes

 What I liked about the workshop is that it is a good workshop for beginners or who have never tried baking with fondant, and if you ask them where they get their supplies or which products works best and its costs, they'll give you a straight answer, no hesitation whatsoever.

Although I must say that the work area is a little overcrowded, I think there were too many students in the class that day, plus the building is right next to the main street, which made it a little noisy. Nevertheless, I still had fun participating in group discussions and listening to some entrepreneurs who wanted to start their own cupcake businesses and some bakers who wanted to learn how to incorporate fondant in their businesses.

The staff were really helpful as well, if you don't have the tools that you need, they'll provide you one except for the gumpaste modelling tool kit and quilting tool, so you have to make sure that you have these. 

By the way, as a tip, don't buy every single tool on the list that they'll give you, you will not be able to use all of them in this workshop and you will just end up with unnecessary expenses. I suggest that you only buy: the quilting tool, gumpaste modelling tool kit, smallest rolling pin (4-6 inches in length), rubber mat ,apron & kitchen towel. No need to buy the flower former, pizza cutter and the shape cutters from Wilton since they have those and they share it around.

 I've learned tons here in a short time and that is the best part. It was a hands-on workshop (which I love love love) but like any other skills, it really takes a lot of hard work and patience to mold these lumps of sugar  and to perfect those cupcake recipes. 

Anyway, here are some of the sweet artworks we managed to make during the workshop. They are really pretty. ^_^