No. You don’t need to know how to assemble a cake, work with sugarpaste or master any particular technique before you join. We start with the basics and build your skills progressively, step by step.

You’re here to learn — not to prove what you already know.

Starting with no previous experience can even be an advantage: you learn the right techniques, methods and habits from the beginning, without first having to correct bad ones.

If you’ve never made a cake design cake before, you’re exactly where you need to be.

In most cases, yes. 

Being able to reproduce individual techniques and having strong foundations are two very different things.

Social media can teach you a great deal: a recipe, a smoothing technique, an assembly method, a sugarpaste trick… But it doesn’t necessarily give you a complete method that connects all these individual skills.

Foundations helps you organise what you’ve already learnt, understand why certain things work — or don’t — and fill the gaps you may not even realise are there when you learn on your own.

The aim isn’t to start again from zero. It’s to turn what you can already do into solid, consistent and repeatable skills.

There are, of course, exceptions. If you already have solid professional training or sufficient technical experience, you may be able to apply directly for some of our more advanced courses, subject to their admission requirements.

Foundations is the natural starting point. It gives you the technical base you need before moving on to more specialised or advanced skills. 

After that, there is no single path. Wedding Cakes, sugar flowers, Wafer Paper and advanced creative techniques all develop different areas of cake design.

You can therefore build your own pathway according to the skills you want to develop and the level you have already reached.

With the exception of courses that are open to everyone, our more advanced courses have specific entry requirements and may require an application, so we can make sure you have the level needed to fully benefit from the course.

Entry requirements and application details are clearly explained on each individual course page.

The two areas complement each other, but their focus is different. 

Our Cake Design courses focus mainly on technical and visual skills: structure, covering, finishing, decoration, wedding cakes, sugar flowers, wafer paper and more advanced creative techniques.

Foundations is the exception. As the starting point of the programme, it approaches the cake as a whole: cake, cream and filling, as well as assembly, structure, finishing, food hygiene, organisation, client relationships and the first principles of pricing.

Our Gourmet Pastry courses go much further into the tasting experience: recipes, fillings, flavour combinations, balance and textures.

In short: Cake Design mainly teaches you to master what people see. Gourmet Pastry teaches you to build what they discover when they take a bite. Foundations creates the link between the two.

Yes, but each course has a different purpose. 

Our Cake Design courses help you develop the technical and creative skills you need to raise your level and produce more accomplished work.

Foundations goes further, because it has been designed as an introduction to the profession as a whole: technique, food hygiene and regulations, organisation, client relationships, and the first principles of strategy and pricing.

If your goal is to work professionally, you can then complete your pathway according to your needs with our Access to the Profession and Business courses.

The aim isn’t simply to learn more techniques, but to gradually build the skills you actually need for your activity.

In that case, our Gourmet Pastry courses will be a better fit. 

They are designed to take you further into recipes, fillings, flavour combinations, textures and the overall balance of the tasting experience.

You can begin by learning how to build and develop flavour combinations with Delicious Pairings, then progress to more complex creations with Flavour & Architecture.

Because a cake can be technically flawless and visually spectacular — and deserve just as much attention from the very first bite.

→ Discover our Gourmet Pastry Courses