He is easy to make: Simply whisk the gummy mix with hot water, fill the mold, and combine (attach) the 2 halves together to create a 3-D Giant Gummy. For easy sharing, the recipe can be halved to make 2 front-faced bears. The Giant Gummy makes a great addition to a candy buffet, dessert table and more!

Our Giant Gummy is also the star of our latest contest: Decorate your Giant Gummy in a scene and upload the pictures! And, of course, we’re giving away great prizes. Please visit our Giant Gummy Contest Entry Page for details. For inspiration, take a look at our Giant Gummy Gallery to see the amazing creations by our decorators.

After you make your Giant Gummy, save the mold for future use. You can return to our website to purchase our refill kit, or mold a bear using Wilton Candy Melts®, crisped rice cereal treats, etc.

We hope you enjoy the Giant Gummy Kit as much as we have here at Wilton. We can’t wait to see your creations!!!

Please browse our new Punch. Cut. Decorate! section where you’ll find dozens of project ideas, techniques and videos to get you started with this quick and easy way to add colorful details to cakes and desserts—even if you’ve never decorated before!

Win a Punch. Cut. Decorate™ Package!

Enter a comment below for a chance to win one of five Punch. Cut. Decorate™ Packages!

How to win:

* Leave a comment on this blog post. Please do not publish your address or phone number in your comment.
* Contest ends at 11:59 PM CST on Saturday, April 23, 2011.
* Must be over 18 to enter.
* One entry per day/per person. Winners selected in a random drawing.
* Contest is open only to legal residents of the 50 United States, Washington, D.C. and Canada, excluding Quebec.
* Please read the Official Sweepstake Rules.

The contest has ended. Congratulations to our winners: Kassie Adelmann, Michael McKinley, Sandy Rolandson, Rachel LaFrance and Debbie Richardson. All winners have been notified by email. Thank you for participating!

I admit that I am the worst person when it comes to getting rid of things that I no longer need. I always have an excuse to keep those shoes that are a little tight, or that scarf that’s a little itchy, or that sweater that’s two sizes too small.

When it comes to putting items in a giveaway box, I need emotional backup in the form of friends or family. And the easiest way to get them to my house to offer a little help? By offering them a tasty little bribe, like cupcakes!

Sweet treats always make hard work less painful, so in honor of springtime, I decided to make my own cupcake garden with Wilton’s Pink Petal Baking Cups, new Peach Petal Baking Cups, and new Grass Baking Cups. After baking yellow cake in all the cups, I got down to the fun part: decorating.

My sister and I used Wilton’s new pastel fondant colors (pink, yellow, green, blue and brown), flower fondant cutters and the 6 Piece Easter Mini Cutter Set to create some fun and colorful flowers, butterflies and bunnies.

After kneading and rolling each color of fondant to 1/8-inch, we cut out the icons we wanted and used just a little bit of icing to layer them together.

My sister even kneaded multiple colors together to get a bit of a tie-dye effect! They turned out great, but my nephews arrived to “help” earlier than planned and more of our fondant characters ended up in their mouths than on the cupcakes.

For my favorite flower cupcake, I used a star tip from the Tip and Nail Set and a green icing tube to star-tip grass on the top of the cupcake. Then I let the boys add Wilton’s new Daisy Sprinkles all over.

For more impact, we added Wilton Purple Posies Royal Icing Decorations, and used a small dab of icing to strategically attach a Butterfly Sprinkle to the posy. The result was quick, easy and gorgeous!

We also used Leaves, Daisies, Pink Posies, and Nest with Jelly Beans Icing Decorations on the other cupcakes for a varied look.

Our colorful Cupcake Garden was displayed on the kitchen table for cleaning motivation. For every hour of spring cleaning completed, you were rewarded with a cupcake from the Cupcake Garden. After three hours, I had a bag filled with coats to give away, a junk room filled with less junk, and four stomachs filled with cupcakes. Spring Cleaning has never been so sweet!

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Win a Spring Cupcake Decorating Package!

Enter a comment below for a chance to win one of 5 Spring Cupcake Decorating Packages!

How to win:

* Leave a comment on this blog post. Please do not publish your address or phone number in your comment.
* Contest ends at 11:59 PM CST on Sunday, April 17, 2011.
* Must be over 18 to enter.
* One entry per day/per person. Winners selected in a random drawing.
* Contest is open only to legal residents of the 50 United States, Washington, D.C. and Canada, excluding Quebec.
* Please read the Official Sweepstake Rules.

The contest has ended. Congratulations to our winners: LaTonya Lewis, Barbara Clark, Lajuana Solomon, Erin Tomasini, Samantha Jayasinghe. All winners have been notified by email. Thank you for participating!

I love this project because it’s got a lot of “wow!” factor but it’s still really easy to do. Even if you bake a Lamb Cake every year, it’s a good idea to read through all the instructions for the pan before beginning because proper baking and cooling times are important for a sturdy finished lamb.

It’s important to use a heavier cake batter, like pound cake. Thicker batter won’t leak out of the pan before it has time to set up in the oven, and once the lamb is baked and cooled, it will be sturdy enough to stand up. The pan bakes perfectly with 5 cups of cake batter. You can easily convert a double layer boxed cake mix into a pound cake by following the formula at the end of this post, or use a homemade recipe for pound cake.  Whichever way you choose to bake, don’t be tempted to fill the pan with more than 5 cups of batter – use any extra to make cupcakes.

Here are the steps:

Line the bottom of your oven with foil as insurance. If filled properly, the pan won’t overflow, but just in case, the foil will be easy to clean up. Preheat the oven to the temperature specified in your cake recipe.

Spray both pans well with Bake Easy™ or another nonstick cooking spray. If you prefer to grease and flour your pans, use a pastry brush to get into every nook and cranny. Dust insides with flour and shake out the excess. Cover any spots that are still shiny with more shortening and dust with flour.

Mix your pound cake batter and pour 5 cups of it into the bottom half of the lamb. Five cups will fill it all the way to the top, until it is almost overflowing. If your batter is so thick that it doesn’t flow evenly, spread it to the edges of the bottom pan. Line up the top pan with the bottom pan. It’s easy to tell the pans apart because the top one has a hole punched in to insert a cake tester or toothpick.

Using kitchen string, tie the pan together in 2 places (kind of like trussing a lamb to roast, only easier!). I like to tie mine at the neck and around the back end. The strings ensure that the rising cake batter won’t force the pan halves apart.

Bake the lamb cake in the center of the oven for 50-60 minutes. Test for doneness by poking a toothpick or cake tester through the hole on the top pan. When it comes out clean, your lamb is done.

Remember that I mentioned that baking AND cooling are very important? Now that it’s baked, the cake needs a chance to cool down and firm up. Remove the pan from the oven to a cooling grid and don’t open it for 5 minutes.

Snip the kitchen string and remove the top half of the pan, cooling like this for 5 more minutes.

Replace the top half of the pan, turn the cake pan over (use oven mitts – it will still be very hot), and remove the bottom half of the pan. Let the cake rest like this until it is completely cool, about 4 hours.

Remove the cake from the pan by placing one hand gently on the cake surface and setting the cake and pan upright on a serving platter. You’ll be able to carefully slip the top pan away from the cake. If the lamb does not stand level on your serving platter, trim the bottom or prop it up with icing.

There are lots of ways to decorate your Lamb Cake, including the traditional Lounging Lamb Cake,  the yummy coconut covered Lamb, and my favorite, Candy Curls Lamb.

Think outside the box too – this pan can be used for so many other things! You can pay tribute to your dog or kitty with a few different decorating techniques. One Wiltonite uses her Lamb Pan every Halloween, but she bakes a red velvet lamb and detaches the head to get into the spooky spirit.

Can you think of other ways to use the pan? How will you decorate your Lamb Cake this year? Be sure to check our website for other Easter cake ideas and Easter bakeware.

Pound Cake from a Boxed Cake Mix

1 box (about 18.25 oz) cake mix
4 eggs
1 cup water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 package pudding mix (use vanilla for white or yellow cakes, use chocolate for devils food)

Mix all ingredients according to cake mix instructions. For Lamb Pan, bake as instructed above.

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Win a Lamb Cake Pan Kit!

Enter a comment below for a chance to win one of 5 Lamb Cake Pan Kits!

How to win:

* Leave a comment on this blog post. Please do not publish your address or phone number in your comment.
* Contest ends at 11:59 PM CST on Wednesday, April 6, 2011.
* Must be over 18 to enter.
* One entry per day/per person. Winners selected in a random drawing.
* Contest is open only to legal residents of the 50 United States, Washington, D.C. and Canada, excluding Quebec.
* Please read the Official Sweepstake Rules.

The contest has ended. Congratulations to our winners: Milagros Parra Castro, Blanca Rivas, Cindy Bankes, Weerasinghe Ganga, and Tara Hawkins. All winners have been notified by email. Thank you for participating!

Wilton recently released a new publication, Pops! Sweets on a Stick, with hundreds of ideas for a wide range of pops! There are cereal treats, cake balls, petite cakes, and brownies to name only a few.

When I first began designing these edible projects, I was focused on fun celebrations for kids. I soon discovered that these treats are not just for the kids, but also for the kid at heart. Adults love them too!

Pops can be sophisticated as well! Monograms and other types of personalization can be added for weddings and engagement parties. They are also great for dessert when having friends over for dinner.

Name a theme for your party and we have a pop to support it! Cowboys, princesses, baseball, baby, bears, aliens, dolls, dinosaurs, the list can go on forever! Designing all these treats was so much fun. People ask me all the time, “where do you get your inspiration?“ The inspiration for this was endless. All I had to do was wander in party stores, paper goods stores and see what is trendy. Of course you can never go wrong with designing something with a face on it. The fun expressions should make you smile when you look at them, and we have plenty of characters to make you smile!

Holidays were a must to have in the Pops! book. We have bunnies for Spring, turkeys for Fall, Santa and his elves for Christmas, and of course Halloween would not be complete without having spooky treats to hand out to the kids!

Of course pops are fun to eat, but making them is equally as fun when using products created especially for the pops line. We have a wide range of pans, sprinkles sets, and dipping candies just to name a few. No need to worry about how to present these creations, Wilton has designed a line of giftable products. Mini treat bags, boxes, and stands help showcase any pop you make!

We are very excited here at Wilton to introduce our Pops! Book…I know you will be excited as well!

Enter our Pops Sweepstake!

To help celebrate our new Pops line, FIVE lucky readers of this blog will each win a Pops Decorating Kit, valued at $125.00. Included in the Kit are some of our most popular Pops decorating tools and accessories.

How to win:

• Visit our online Pops store or our Pops recipe page and tell us in a comment (on this blog post) your favorite. Please do not publish your address or phone number in your comment.
• Contest begins at 10 AM CST on Friday, January 21 and will close at 11:59 PM CST on Tuesday, January 25, 2011.
• One entry per day/per person. Winners selected in a random drawing.
• Previous winners of Pops Decorating Kits not eligible to win.
• We’re sorry, the contest is open to U.S. residents only.
• Please read the Official Sweepstake Rules.

The contest is closed. Winners have been notified by email. Thank you for participating!

Jessica, author of My Silly Monkeys, will receive a $500 Visa gift card. Our nine outstanding finalists will each receive a $100 Visa gift card. If you didn’t get a chance to review the entries, do yourself a favor and check out the finalists.

Thank you to all our entrants for sharing your decorating tips, inspiration and imagination. For more Pops decorating ideas and a great selection of Wilton pops products, please visit our website.

Get on the stick – try a Pop!

We reviewed every Blogger’s entry post, and then had the difficult task of narrowing down the field to 10 finalists. You decide the grand prize winner!

Voting begins Thursday, January 13, 2011 at 10:00 AM CST and ends Wednesday, Jan 19, 2011 at 11:59 PM CST. You can vote once every day. The grand prize winner will receive a $500 Visa gift card, and the nine remaining finalists will each receive a $100 Visa gift card.

Thank you to our Blogger friends for their creative entries. Good luck to our 10 finalists! For more Pops decorating inspiration, check out our website.

Remember – you have one vote every day!

Eric Erwin, Executive Vice President of Marketing and Product Development, welcomed the guests and surprised everyone with a copy of the 2011 Wilton Yearbook. We had just received our first copies from the printer THAT morning. The yearbooks won’t be available at any of our retailers until the end of June.

Next, Steve Rocco, Senior Director of Cake and Visual Design, answered questions on many topics including the 2011 Wilton Yearbook and his creative process. It was really interesting to hear how Steve’s creative process works, what inspires him, and how ideas flow from his imagination to a publication like the Wilton Yearbook.

After Steve’s Question and Answer, the group toured the Decorating Room where they had an opportunity to talk to Wilton’s cake decorators and have a look at projects created by the decorating team. Then, they watched a decorating demonstration using Fondant by two of our Wilton Method Instructor Trainers, Ann Kessler and Heidi Whelan.

Finally, the attendees headed to the Wilton Tent Sale. Not only were the Sweet-Up guests able to shop one day before the Tent Sale was opened to the public, but they received an additional 20% off everything at the Tent Sale.

It was a truly exciting experience for everyone at Wilton and the participants really seemed to enjoy themselves. We’re already receiving questions about the 2011 Sweet-Up!

To see more photos from the event, please view the 2010 Wilton Sweet-Up photo album on the Wilton Facebook fan page.

Thank you to all the contestants for sharing your memories. Happy Mother’s Day!

Joy, Loyall, Kentucky

My Mother-in-law was a big inspiration in many ways. She was a wonderful cake decorator. The first time I ever saw one of her creations was my wedding cake. I had not been alone with her much before that day, and I walked in when she did not know I was there. She was praying for me, her son, and our marriage as she was putting the cake together. It really touched me. She realized I was there and, since I didn’t mean to walk in on her in such an private moment, I quickly commented on the cake. She invited me in to watch and explained each thing she was doing as she did it. She said, “you know, building a marriage is like building a cake. You need strength to hold it together,” as she inserted dowels in the main tier. I never forgot that day or her instruction. She died in 1997 of cancer, but she was a good mother to me, even if not my own.

Katelyn, Nanaimo, British Columbia

My memory is of my Grandmother’s 80th birthday party. I made 80 individual little cakes, 8 each of 10 different kinds. I made a speech saying I had asked her what kind of cake she would like for her birthday, and she said her usual “whatever you do will be wonderful, dear. Lemon, chocolate, vanilla, whatever you would like to make.” I told her I’d made them all, and on my cue all my cousins came out carrying trays. She started out smiling, but by the end of the procession she was weeping, she was so touched. It was a wonderful memory that involves the best Grandma anyone could ever ask for.

Jonelle, Gainesville, Georgia

My first memory and the start of my “obsession” (according to my hubby) of Wilton cakes and products began with my Stepmom buying the Wilton Batman/Superman cake pan in 1980. My brothers had a boy scout event and needed a cake for the cake raffle. My Stepmom thought it would be kinda neat if we used the Batman/Superman cake pan but decorate it like a boy scout. I was only 12 at the time and decorated it perfectly with a little supervision. By the way, the cake raised $135 (back in 1980). I was so excited over this that I decided to make Wilton cakes for every birthday or special occasion. Now 30 years later, I signed up for my first Wilton Decorating Course to officially learn the right way. I am on the Wilton site almost every night. Thanks to my Stepmom sharing her love of Wilton way back when. I even inherited a few of our pans from the early 80s. My collection consists of at least 35 character pans and about 15 other Wilton pans. I am starting my fondant and gumpaste class in May.

Beth, Miamisburg, Ohio

My grandparents were celebrating 50 golden years,
mom and I made a cake that brought them to tears.
My mom is an artist and I love to bake,
we worked well together to create this big cake.
She drew the designs while I did the baking,
she frosted the layers, then I piped on the icing.
Wilton’s cake tools were all that we needed,
we worked for two days and we finally succeeded
in making a cake that was three tiers tall
filled with golden flowers and a cool water fall.
This cake was so beautiful and we were so proud
everyone at the party was certainly wowed.
Grandma and Grandpa couldn’t believe their eyes
when they walked in the room to see their surprise.
They hugged us and kissed us, we knew they were glad.
We were happy to tell them about the fun that we had.
Working together had brought us such joy
all that we wanted was a cake they’d enjoy.
We are so happy for the memories we made,
as my grandparents are gone now for over a decade.

Chelsey, Edmonton, Alberta

My mom is not only an amazing person, but an amazing baker as well (these traits don’t always come together). She learned to bake from her grandmother’s recipes, complete with handwritten notes about weather, being a mother and life in general. My mom still has this cookbook but also started her own as she began her own life as a wife and mother. I can remember ‘helping’ her in the kitchen and always asking her to read the notes to me. Later as I grew, I wrote the notes. I’m so grateful to be able to look back and see my life through notes in an old recipe book, but even more I’m grateful for my mom. Last year I started taking Wilton cake decorating courses because of a Barbie cake my mom made for me. To my surprise my mom presented me with her first Wilton yearbook, complete with notes of when she made each cake. Now with my own Wilton yearbook, I prepare my legacy for my daughter.

Patsy, Monett, Missouri

My wonderful Mother has been gone for several years now, but I guess my fondest memory of her was one Mother’s Day I decided to make her a special cake. I think I was 11 or 12 years old. I wanted to make it from scratch. Needless to say it was a disaster! The cake was not done in the middle and the icing ran off the cake. I left it on the kitchen table for her to “discover.” When I came home later from my dance lesson, the icing was perfect and it looked beautiful!! My Mom said the icing just needed to “set up.” I knew she had worked very hard to fix it; but neither of us said a word. We served it that evening; and both my Mom and Dad said it was the best cake they ever had! I am the proud Mom of a 47 year old mentally challenged daughter and she and I will be re-creating that cake this Mother’s Day together!! LOVE NEVER FAILETH!!!!!

Robyn, Marshall, Minnesota

Every weekend my grandparents would keep one of their 9 grandchildren overnight to bake cookies with Grandma. When it was your turn you got to do everything; pick the recipe, go to the grocery store with Grandpa, and even crack the eggs. You got to taste test some, take some home, and the rest stocked Grandma’s freezer. Whenever anyone came to Grandma’s for tea, a treat would come out of the freezer and there would not be a name of the cookies on the package but the name of the child who made them. Now that we are all grown with children of our own, we are enjoying seeing our children do the same with our mother. We have all continued to enjoy baking and it always brings a fond memory of our Grandmother.

Amber, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

My mom and I always baked together growing up. We would spend all day on Saturdays making all kinds of treats and trying out all sorts of new recipes. She would always have Elvis playing in the background and we would sing and talk. At the time I thought we were just baking but now as I look back, I realized that those were the times we really “talked” and she would share stories and memories with me. These were also the times that I felt I could talk with her about WHATEVER I wanted! I also now see that those times taught me math and reading skills, patience, the courage to try new things, expand my creativity as well as learning to trust in myself and develop self-confidence. I remember being so proud of ourselves when a new recipe was a success! But when they were a flop, she taught me how to handle disappointment with grace and lots of laughter! I really miss those times but I know my daughters will get the same experience with her.

Emily, Fridley, Minnesota

I used to bemoan the fact that while other kids got cakes in the shapes of koala bears, I got rectangular pans covered in brown frosting. On my next birthday I pleaded for a store bought cake with Barbie on top. Day of, I suddenly realized that boys would be present – Barbie had to go! As we removed her, my heart sank: the white frosting stretched on forever, interrupted only by the thin pink piping. Looking at the void (and slight dent left by her derriere), I started to panic. Noticing my distress, mom reached into the cupboard and pulled out “the box” – filled with cookie cutters and decorations. Filling the spots with a mix of candles, palm trees and a few of the 7 dwarfs – the cake was quickly abuzz with activity. It was at this moment that I had a very mature revelation for a girl of eight. I realized that my happiness wasn’t related to what the cake looked like. The fuzzy feeling came from the knowledge that my mom had made something especially for me.

Jennifer, Indiantown, Florida

How do you keep the crumbs out of the icing? I asked my mother as we worked together to ice our first cake. This is my fondest memory of decorating with my mother. It was the day of my 17th birthday, and my mother had given me the Wilton Master Tip Set, two decorating bags and the current Wilton Yearbook as gifts. We had decided that evening to attempt to decorate, for the first time, a cake. I learned many lessons that night while bonding over cake decorating and learning the shell border, laughing as we attempted the Wilton rose, and learning how to write with icing. I learned that like icing a cake, patience was a life lesson. It was through patience and practice that my mother and I worked together to learn cake decorating. Our mutual love of cake decorating has even motivated us to save our pennies to be able to meet in Chicago to take the Wilton Master Course together and have the opportunity to once again share special moments together over cake.

All contest winners have been notified by Wilton.

They say winning is everything, well I think every time you create a cake for family and friends you are the winner. So keep it up, the smiles on their faces are a prize you will win over and over again and never get tired of! Thanks to everyone who enter the 4,000,000th Student Sweepstakes.

GRAND PRIZE WINNER
A Cake Decorating Course at the Wilton School of
Confectionary Arts in Darien, Illinois

Stephanie Simpson

FIRST PRIZE WINNERS – $100 Wilton Gift Certificate

Ruth Campbell	Jen Stevens	Debbie Knutson
Debbie Brownfield	Dana Gilpin	Hilda Silva
Debra Mayton	Amber Meagher	Allison Young
Laureen O’Donnell	Julie Anderson	Patricia Stephens
Rhonda St Louis	Amberley Thompson	Olessa Hanzlik
Courtney Eiskant	Supannee Adams	Kim Ross
Angel Usdansky	Marlene Morris	Donna Irwin
Melissa Parson	Trina Mack	Kristen Collura
Rosalyn Burton	Julie Morris	Melissa Montoya
Elizabeth Bennett Shipp	Linda Morin	Niria Arana
Christine Owens	Shelley Duff	Courtney Powe
Amy Gay	Mirand Besecker

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