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Do you know what it is like when a cake artist you have admired for a long time agrees to let you take a private class with them and then tells you, you can do any two projects you’d like? Oh, my head started to spin… it’s like Santa giving you his goody bag of toys and saying ‘go ahead, pick ANYTHING you want!’

I’ve been a long time admirer of the work from Mike’s from Mike’s Amazing Cakes (Facebook page here). The business name does not lie – his cakes are not only amazing, but super awesome and structurally gravity defying too.

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! I was so excited and could not really settle on an idea. So finally I decided to work backwards… What did I want to learn most out of the classes? Then I started to develop the designs around those learning outcomes.

I knew I wanted to learn how to use motors to make things move, and I also wanted to work on something super gravity defying. Hmmm…. so since I was told ‘anything’ I decided to aim high and make it challenging. How did I know it would be challenging? Well, I thought of the designs I had chosen and wondered how I would make the structure if I really wanted to try to. My mind came up blank so I knew I had made the right choice 🙂

The class was fantastic and Mike went over the top to share everything he knows and even gave me an explanation of all his different power tools and a rundown of all the different materials he uses. I quickly learned that Mike was super detailed and very organised.

He went to the effort of making all the templates for me, doing all the research, printing out all the photos of the different angles, gathering lots of references and creating a picture board… so all I had to do was follow his step by step instructions and learn his techniques. He is by far the most organised teacher I have had the pleasure of learning from.

Lots of decorators these days tend to be highly guarded when it comes to sharing how they do things but Mike is extremely down to earth and more than willing to share his decorating knowledge which I really admire.

These were by far the most challenging projects I have ever undertaken and I am so happy with how they both turned out and how much I learnt from Mike. I only wished I lived in the US to be able to take more classes with him. If you are lucky enough to be able to spend some time with Mike in class, I highly recommend it 🙂

Or if you can’t find time to visit, you can watch his classes online at Craftsy! Check the links below to receive a discount.

[craftsy id=4858 title=’Mike McCarey: Incredible Cut-Out Cakes’] [craftsy id=2879 title=’Mike McCarey: All-Star Cakes’] [craftsy id=357 title=’Mike McCarey: Classic Car, Timeless Techniques’] [craftsy id=146 title=’Mike McCarey: Advanced Cake Sculpting’]