Confectionery Decoration Techniques For Professional Bakers Training

Learning Outcomes

• Apply advanced piping techniques to create intricate designs on cakes and pastries.
• Demonstrate proficiency in working with sugar, including pulling, blowing, and casting.
• Design and implement chocolate decorations such as curls, shards, and molds.
• Analyze color theory and composition to produce visually balanced confectionery.
• Evaluate the structural integrity of decorative elements for transport and display.
• Implement food safety and hygiene standards during decoration processes.

Target Audience

This course is designed for professional bakers, pastry chefs, and confectionery artisans seeking to elevate their decoration skills. It is ideal for individuals currently employed in bakeries, hotels, or patisseries who wish to specialize in decorative techniques.

Prerequisites

None — open enrollment.

Course Outline

Practicals

Overview

Practical sessions are integral, comprising 50% of the course. Learners will develop hands-on skills in piping, icing, fondant work, chocolate tempering, sugar art, and final cake assembly through supervised practice. Each session builds proficiency and confidence in real-world decorating scenarios.

Practical Activities

• Practical 1: Piping and Buttercream Basics — Learners practice piping techniques on parchment and dummy cakes, then prepare and apply buttercream to a single-layer cake, including crumb coating and simple borders. (12h)
• Practical 2: Fondant Coverage and Royal Icing — Learners cover a cake with fondant, create cut-out decorations, and practice royal icing flooding and piping on cookies and small cakes. (14h)
• Practical 3: Chocolate and Sugar Art — Learners temper chocolate, make curls and moulds, and create pulled sugar ribbons and a small sugar flower. Safety protocols are emphasised. (14h)
• Practical 4: Advanced Decorating Techniques — Learners pipe a rose on a flower nail, create a marzipan fruit, and use an airbrush to apply a gradient on a fondant-covered cake. (14h)
• Practical 5: Final Project Execution — Learners design and decorate a tiered celebration cake incorporating at least three techniques (e.g., fondant, piping, chocolate work). The cake is presented and evaluated. (14h)

Summatives

Each delegate is assessed continuously throughout the course via daily exercises, scored practical assignments, and a final summative test at the end.

Practical Assignments — 30%

Practical assignments are observed and scored against a rubric during the practical sessions. Each delegate's practical mark is averaged into a single 100% score and contributes 30% to the final total.

Daily Exercises — 20%

Every training day ends with a multiple-choice exercise scored out of 100%. The scores from each daily exercise are averaged across the duration of the course to produce a Daily Average mark, which contributes 20% to the final total.

Final Test — 50%

On the last day a final summative test is written. It is a multiple-choice paper with multiple-answer questions: each question may have more than one correct option, and a single wrong selection on a question marks the entire question wrong — no partial credit. The final test is scored out of 100% and contributes 50% to the overall mark.

Final Total

Component	Out of	Weight
Practical Assignments (rubric-scored)	100%	30%
Daily Average (multiple choice)	100%	20%
Final Test (multi-answer multiple choice)	100%	50%
Final Total	—	100%

All marks are recorded on the AATICD LMS and visible to each learner under their account.

Certificate

How it works

• Certificates are auto-generated on the AATICD LMS as soon as the marks pass the 50% threshold.
• Each certificate is a branded PDF with the delegate's name, the course title, the unit standard ID, NQF level, credits, and the date of issue.
• You can download or print your certificate from your LMS dashboard at any time after issue — there's no reissue fee and no expiry date.
• If you scored under 50% you can sit the final test again at the next scheduled session at no extra cost.

Where to find it

Sign in to the LMS, open your dashboard, and your certificates appear under My Certificates. Each entry has a View / Download button and a print option.

Training Discounts

Group discounts apply automatically — the more delegates you enrol, the greater the saving. Discounts are calculated at 3% per 5 delegates, scaling up to 40% off for 100+ delegates.

Delegates	Discount
5	3% off
10	6% off
15	9% off
20	12% off
25	15% off
30	18% off
50	30% off
75	35% off
100	40% off

3% discount per 5 delegates, up to 40% off for 100+ delegates. Contact us for a custom group quote.