Hi Sophisticated and welcome to cakesdecor! Hmmm advice ok just gonna run this off the top of my head;
Use the internet as much as possible for a learning tool, there are alot of great blogs (tutorials on this site too) and youtube tutorials out there where you can pick up alot of tips and tricks. I got a bunch of cake decorating books I like but the internet is easy and usually the best way to get the information. There are a ton of self taught decorators on this site and they are awesome!
Take it slow, learn and perfect the basics, icing a cake and covering a cake with fondant would be the most basic thing you can learn, it also can be the hardest and sometimes the most time consuming part of your decorating. I think it’s every cake decorators dream to have flawless icing/fondant or maybe thats just my dream….
Practice when you can! My best lessons have always been through trial and error and I make practice cakes with left over cake batter from orders, freeze and than break them out when I got time to kill.
When it comes to cake tools, start off small, I have so much crap I bought when I first started decorating some I have barely used, some not at all. It’s very easy to get excited about buying new cake tools so what I think are must haves are: a kitchen aid, a good turn table (I use a ateco cast iron), a good fondant mat, a heavy rolling pin, a fondant smoother, X-acto kinfe and a self healing mat. Thats just what I get the most use out of but there are plenty of others I use almost daily.
I also saw you went to culinary school, so did I. It’s good to know how much your recipe costs, cakes cost alot more than people realize to make them so before you jump right in and start quoting people $30-40 bucks for a cake, see how much it cost you to make the cake and how much time you spend on it. This is the biggest mistake cake decorators make, I have done it over and over again, sometimes it’s hard to stay firm with your prices but you got to if you want to succeed.
Well hope that helps some, if you got any other questions just ask!
Jessica, Kodiak Alaska http://www.facebook.com/ConceptualConfections
