Bespoke Cakery: After Action Review: Wilton Sweet Up!

Last Year's Cake of the Year

This past week it was my pleasure to attend the annual Wilton Sweet Up! held at the Wilton corporate headquarters in Woodridge, IL. This was my first trip to the Sweet Up, but it has been held for several years now. At its root, the event is a place for Wilton to debut it's new product to fans, and get them exited and talking about what's coming up.

Cake At The Wilton School

Here is how the day went. We arrived at the Wilton School in Darien at about 11:30. After a brief tour of the school and history of Wilton, some coach buses took us to the corporate HQ where we all part of a live stream where Wilton let us know what they saw as the "Five Mega Trends". The trends were things like butter cream (which they will now be selling in handy squeeze packs) fondant (now available in "decorators preferred fondant" tiny treats, tall cakes and less is more/decorating simplified.

Beth Somers Presents the "Mega Trends"

At the end of the presentation, they unveiled the new "cake of the year" and we got some pictures of that too.

Cake Of The Year

After the show, we split up into groups where we got to test new products and have a little fun with the items they will be rolling out. I was in a group that tested out the new squeeze packs of butter cream to decorate a mini tall cake, and then a cupcake fondant session.

The New Wilton Butter Cream Pouches!

My Husband's Monster Cake

My Butter Cream Mini Tall Cake

My Fondant Cupcake

Wilton Display Cakes

Finally, we were taken on a tour to see the test kitchen, decorating room, and photography studio. We finished off the afternoon with a chat in the trend lab. We all had taken a quiz before attending which assigned us to a style of cake decorator-I was the decorating perfectionistia. Each category had a wall panel highlighting projects designed for that group. However, I found that I liked the cakes featured in the decorating diva section best.