I absolutely love teaching our advanced cupcake decorating class. The students are always amazed by how professional their results are. With our beginners http://www.cookiegirl.co.uk/empty-land/ and intermediate http://www.cookiegirl.co.uk/empty-land-1/ cake classes we use cream cheese icing as it gives a good flow. When it comes piping roses, carnations, frills etc we use buttercream for this cake decorating class as we need a firmer icing to allow the individual petals to stay up.
We have a lot of clients who come to the beginners class and then move onto the intermediate and advanced classes. Some people choose to do them all in one day. This means they can from amateur to professional standard in a very short time.