After much thought and consideration, I will not be taking cake orders for the following weeks:
Aug 30th-Sept. 6th (booked)
Sept. 6th-Sept. 13th (personal)
Nov. 1st-Nov. 8th (friend’s wedding)
Dec. 27th-Jan. 3rd (personal)
I will try to keep this post updated and will probably turn it into a calendar page after the next post to keep it from getting lost.
Thanks so much (and sorry if you were looking at one of those weeks for a cake! I’d be glad to make it at a later date!
Just an announcement to say that I’ve successfully tested a new cake recipe. It will be called Mocha Speckled Cake (for right now…not really thrilled with that name!) Anyway, it’s a super moist, very fluffy coffee-flavored cake with shaved chocolate throughout. This is the cake that I tested with my Mother-in-Law’s Mother’s Day Cake. It is superbly yummy with chocolate buttercream, although I’m sure it would be just as yummy with white buttercream also! I wish I would have gotten a better picture!
Mocha Speckled Cake
I have found the PERFECT yellow cake! It’s moist, yummy, torted (layered) well, is sturdy, iced easily (low crumb) and best of all…it was YELLOW…and did I mention yummy! Yippee!
Well, I tested two more recipes today…both yellow cakes. My problem now is that they are both good, but for different reasons! The first has great moisture, texture and flavor (but to me is a little on the sweet side). The second is perfectly yellow, moist, has great texture and good flavor, but could be a little sweeter! DILEMAS! My trusty cake taster is off work today, so not around town to taste them, so they will probably wait until tomorrow for a deciding factor! I may just tweak the second recipe a little to make it a bit more sweet!
Sorry this post will have no pictures…keep reading though! 
I bake all my cakes from scratch. I use recipes and quality ingredients, but sometimes, just sometimes…even using great ingredients and recipes makes for bad cake! I spent the day yesterday testing recipes. I searched high and low on the internet looking for highly-rated cake recipes. When I found them, I printed them out. Then I chose a few to bake. I’m not sure why so many people liked this particular yellow cake recipe. One of the yellow cakes I tested was spit-out-of-your-mouth nasty…and it actually had a really high rating…by a lot of people!
I’ve been getting a few complaints that my cakes have good flavor, but are a little on the dry side. I heard it especially, about my white cake, so that prompted the search. After a few failures (yellow cake), I have found THE PERFECT CHOCOLATE CAKE! The flavor, texture and moisture-level are perfect…it’s superb! I also tested a white cake that I really love too! The flavor is almost like an angel food cake, but a little denser and it’s pretty darn moist too!
See, texture is key in stacked cakes. While it would be nice to have a soft, fall-apart-melt-in-your-mouth cake, it’s really hard to layer and stack a cake like that! Sides bulge, they crumble when torted, and they squish when stacking…makes a decorator’s life a nightmare! So, I’m trying to find a happy medium!
Back to baking…
The first time I got an itch to decorate cakes for a living happened back in 2004. I was the host for my little sister’s wedding shower. I enlisted the help of my very best friend, Kristy and her very talented mother-in-law, Sharon. My sister’s wedding was to have very colorful Gerbera daisies, so I borrowed that theme and we used the daisies to create a very stunning cake. Kristy remembers me uttering something about really liking what I was doing and that it would be fun to do that someday.
Over the next year, I made a few cakes for various family events, but nothing big. Then came my son’s first birthday party. This being my first child, I wanted a BIG party! He liked farm animals at the time, so I made a cow and a pig cake, sunflower cupcakes and LOTS of farm-themed cookies. Then came more family events, my son’s 2nd birthday cake, my nephew’s first birthday cake and my youngest son’s first birthday cake.
Somewhere during all that, I decided that I needed some further exploration to determine if this was something I could (1) do better, (2) keep having fun at, and (3) learn more about. So, I invested in the Wilton School of Cake Decorating classes taught through Michaels. I LOVED the classes so much that I finally decided that this is something I could/should/want/need to do for a living!
Now, in the great state of Illinois, you can’t just run a food business out of your home. In order to be a licensed food business (with the Health Department’s blessing) you need to bake and decorate in a kitchen separate from your living space…ie: commercial kitchen or a garage kitchen. Since we don’t have the room or the want to add onto our house, we need to search for some commercial kitchen rental space. This is where I’ll be taking it kind of slow. I’m a stay-at-home-Mommy to two beautiful boys. My oldest will be entering pre-school this year, with the youngest following in a year or so. I adore staying home with them, so we’ll be moving ahead slowly! We could easily say this is my “Two-Year Plan”. And in the meantime, I’ll be doing all the necessary research (product development, pre-marketing, pricing, etc.) Oh yeah, and PRACTICE!!! I also hope that I will be able to further my eduction and perhaps take an internship in another successful cakery!
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