Rounded cakes always drove me nuts. They never seemed to be perfectly round like I wanted, like a ball. It was so annoying trying to figure it out! I always wondered why they never made a cake pan in this size? Not the small size Wilton makes, I was looking for a large ball. I finally figured out what I could do. Just use a rounded bottom mixing bowl!

I prefer a heavier steel ball. I pour the batter in just like I would a cake pan and bake. I will do this twice if I want a completely round ball or just once for  a half ball.

After, I let my cake cool I trim off the top or bottom (depending how you look at it) to make a flat surface. Once I do this I crumb coat each flat surface and dowel one side of the ball.  I do this so the ball does not come apart. Then I crumb coat the whole cake. I have had really good success using a crusting buttercream. This way if your ball is a little uneven you can just add my buttercream there and round it up a bit. From here, I would cover with fondant or more buttercream.

This technique works well for making any type of sports ball, hats, or helmets.

Baby blocks cake

Oh, I just love doing baby cakes. This baby blocks cake is extremely popular at the bakery. It is  probably because it is fairly simple to make and the blocks can go on top or around any size cake. Below is a half sheet cake. I added five baby blocks the the top. The blocks  are made out of pound cake and then covered in poured fondant. I outlined each block in colored icing and piped a letter on each one. You can use these blocks in a variety of ways, a b c’s, 1 2 3′s, names, dates,  and times etc… It does not have to be just for a baby shower. Also, those blocks are a nice size serving of cake, so your special one can have something special of their very own.

I seem to work for owners who do not care about their bakery anymore. Every bakery has their ups and down, but where I work it seems to have more downs. My bakery is more than 100 years old. It is ran by the second generation owners. The owners are almost 80. They do not want to revamp the business even though it is losing money.  All they do is complaint on how they are not making money, that all their problems are employee relates and that it is a product of a bad economy. Well they are wrong! The main problem is them.

They come in to the bakery everyday and just complain about anything and everything! They believe it is everyone else’s fault that the business is doing poorly not theirs!

All the employees have at one time or another tried to help the situation out by giving them ideas about new products or what other places are selling. It all falls or deaf ears. Unless we are part of the family by blood, our ideas do not make it out to the store.  Countless time we have voiced our displeasure to tried and remedy the situation but with no luck.  It just seems like they do not care.

Supplies are necessary to keep a business on track and open. When a business makes a habit of running out of supplies it is usually not a good sign.  The business may not have the money to keep supplies on hand or they may just have a bad manager who does not know how to order the proper amount of supplies.

My business runs out of supplies constantly. In one aspect it is a good thing, it shows that we have a good enough business where everything sells out. On the other hand, it shows that we don’t care enough not to run out. The usual excuse I get when I tell the boss that we ran out of cake boards is that “They cost  a lot of money to buy or that we used more than we normally do”  Both answers are not a good reason, it takes money to make money. If you don’t buy it, we can’t sell  it.  We do a steady amount of business, during our busy times, like holidays and graduations the boss should know to order more stuff. If he does not, that is his fault that we ran out.

What does he expect me to tell a customer when I do not have a box to put their cake in? Or when we give them to big of a cake board? Even when we up their cake size because we ran out of the size they wanted? The truth, that we ran out is not a good excuse to the customer.

Deciding to sell a business is a hard decision to make. It is not just something to decide over night. Most owners think about selling it for months, maybe even years. So why when I asked you if we were gonna close did you not tell me? Why when I told you I saw the listing online did you act like you did not know? Do you think I’m stupid? I know that you are selling the bakery!

You decided that selling the bakery was the right decision for you. I should have been told. I’m a good employee that will stick it out to the end, maybe. I should not have found out one day by having potential buyers walking around! That was just a slap in the face for my years of service to you. Do you not realize that you are going to be putting me out of a job? It would be nice to know that I will be needing to look for a job in a few months.

It’s also nice to be updated on what’s going on.  People come and they go and they come again. Are they buyers? When do you think would be a good time to tell me that the place is sold, when I come into work and the doors are locked one morning? Let me know things in advance so I can plan too. Do I not at least deserve that?

When owners fight in the bakery it is just bad news. I work for a family business. The parents own the business and all the children work there. They drive everyone nuts when they fight. They talk about each other behind their back to the employees. When one sibling gets mad at the other, they pick on employees.

I should not have to deal with this, I am a employees of the business not a family member. Family fights should be had at home not in the work place. If they disagree with each other over something, why do I have to know about it? You guys are making my job harder than it should be.

Eight people should not all be my direct manager, I should have one. I think you guys need to figure out a way to get along when you are working together. When I have a question and I ask one manager, you should answer me. The other managers there should just accept their decision the manager made. Please do not tell me to ignore it just because you do not agree wit it. It puts me in the middle and leads me to be confused on what to do. Set up a system of order, rank your managers in number order of who I should listen to over others and don’t put me in the middle anymore.

Everyone gets sick at some point and time. Most of us suck it up and go to work anyway. However, there are times that we are just to sick to go in so we call out. Now I have worked at many different places and every business has different call out policies. Some places I just needed to leave a message with someone who will in turn relay it to a manager. Other places I can leave a call out message on a machine, while others I need to speak directly to a manager.

The place I currently work at I have to place several different calls or text messages and hope someone eventually gets back to me. When I first started I was told to call one person and let them know. I did that, but they sometimes would not answer their phone or texts. So I was stuck calling my work or other co workers to let my management know.

There needs to be something done about this. I need to know that my messages are going through to the management. They should let me know what I need to do in reference to calling out. Whatever it is, they should decide to do it and stick with it, because calling a bunch of people when your sick is no fun.

So what really is the difference between owners and bosses of the bakery? Not much in our case. I work at a family business. It is not my family. The business has six family members who work there, only two are owners. The people who own the business are the parents. Three of the family members are children and there is one in law working there. Every person with the bakery’s last name assumes they are the leader, even the ones who do not work there.

One “owner” will tell us to do something one way and than the other “owner” will say that we are doing it wrong. When we have a problem however, there are never any “owners” who are willing to deal with our issues. It gets to be a bit frustrating when there is no leadership and when there is leadership its everyone over ruling each other. This is no way to run a business successfully!

There needs to be structure in a small business. We as employees, need to know that when a problem arises that it will be handled. We need to know who our managers are  and who trumps who. Most businesses run with a tiered management structure and that is what my business needs.

This is a variation of my crusting buttercream recipe that I use. It is a variation because it changed due to the weather conditions. In the summer i make it a little stiffer and in the winter a little thinner. The only difference I see with it, is that it take a little longer to crust in the winter time. However, it is one of the quicker crusting recipes that I have used over the years.

7 1/2 cup shortening

7 1/2 cup 10x sugar

4-6 oz of coffee creamer (1:1 ratio creamer to boiling water)

Flavoring to taste

This recipe makes enough icing to ice a few cakes fully. I prefer my icing to be a bit on the thinner side so I add most of the liquid to it. I would suggest adding less at first and then making it a consistency you like. I whip my icing for about ten minutes on a high-speed. I try to make  sure that my paddle is completely covered by the buttercream. This way, I prevent air from being introduced to the mixture. Remember the smoother it is in the bowl, the smoother your finished product will be!

This is our Swirls Whirls cake. It is one of our more popular cakes. This is  a three tiered cake with a different pattern on each tier. We added a bow on top with shooting stars. Generally, we like our bows to match the cake but we did as the customer wanted and put a white bow on with stripes.

We let the customer pick out patterns that they like and we offer our assistance along the way. With things such as, pattern choices and color palettes that go well together. I think that this cake turned out quite nice.

The color choices that the customer made worked well this time. Some customers come in with crazy ideas of what colors work well with each other. We always tell them our opinion with color, but sometimes they just do not listen. I personally think that this cake would have look better with a solid color bow on top, but I can’t make the final decision on it. I was just happy that the customer left our bakery happy with the cake!

People like to mimic non edible things with cake. Here is an example of a engagement ring box cake. The customer wanted everything made out of fondant, but once we told her the price she changed her mind. We did let the customer know that we never guaranteed exact color or design (they are copyrighted you know) We finished this box and were please with the outcome along with the customer.

This cake was made out of colored buttercream, airbrush color, and fondant accents. The design on the ring box is not identical to the actual box but it was close.

Here is a fondant jungle baby shower cake that my bakery made. It is very simple and was easy to make.

Here is what I did

Everything on here is fondant, with the exception of the tree. We wrapped a pretzel rod in chocolate fondant so it would stand up straight and be edible. We are big on everything being edible. I mean who would want to bite into a plastic straw, wooden dow, or metal wires holding their cake together.

It really amazes me on some of the ideas that our customers come up with.  They even draw out cake so we get their idea more clearly. This is one of those cakes. We would have preferred to do some of the decorations in buttercream, just our preference, but the customer wanted all fondant. She’s the boss and she loved her jungle baby shower cake.

Topsy Turvy cakes are fairly easy  to make. They look hard to make and people are very impressed by them. First, you will need to bake a few cakes and then level them straight. I prefer to use a few 9 inch round cakes and a level.  Next you will want to ice in between the layers and  stack your cakes accordingly. Now make sure to level your cake flat, you will want your trimmed cake to resemble a box~straight up and down sides and a flat top. Once this is done, cut at angle from one top corner of your cake about 2/3 the way down to the other side of the cake. Remove the top piece that you just cut and coat the bottom half of your cake with icing. Now flip the top piece of your cake around, so both of the high pieces of the cake lay on top of each other. Make sure that the top and bottom pieces lay flat together and have straight up and down sides. Cover entire cake with  icing and enjoy your topsy turvy cake. Remember your cake does not have to be perfect, it just has to taste good!

Shaped cakes are fairly simply to make, if you have the right tools. At my bakery we do 2d shaped cakes daily.  We cut the shape out of sheet cakes only. There is basically no limit on what we can make.

How to make a shaped cake

We first find a picture online of our character. Than we place that picture in our  kopy kake machine, we than trace the outline of the picture onto the cake.  From here, we cut out the shape and ice it. We than go back and trace out the details and fill them in with icing or airbrush color.

Oh barbie, how we love thee! Barbie cakes are a huge seller at my bakery. Every little girl wants one. Here is just one of the many designs we make of the barbie cake. We can do any design that the customer thinks of. The only thing that stops their imagination sometimes is the rising price of their detailed designs.

Decorating Instrucions

The cake consist of  four 8 inch cakes, stacked on top of each other, rounded at the edges, buttercream iced, and decorated. We add a fondant plaque for the writing. We feel it gives our cake that extra special touch!