We like to mimic non edible things with cake. Here is a ring box cake. The design on the ring box is not identical to the actual box but the customer still loved it!

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

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.

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. 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. The cake consist of  two 8 inch cakes, stacked on top of each other, and rounded at the edges.

Waiting in line at the bakery sucks, especially when the line is long. At my job, we always have a line. Everyone has to wait, even if you preordered your baked goods, even if you paid already. I know it is not a good system but it is the one we have. No, we do not have a different line for ordered goods. No, I cannot help you as I am the decorator putting cakes out for sale. My suggestion is to take a number and wait just like everyone else. Maybe you could complain to management and they would change their line structure, instead of just telling me. My suggestion to you, is to order you goods for early am and than ask the sales girl when is a good time to come in so you do not have to wait in line all day. Lastly, remember that a line in the bakery is good. It shows that are products are worth the wait!

This is a cake I have been getting a lot of orders for lately. I do not know who originally designed it but I do not like it! This cake is  basically made to look like a baby’s bottom with a blanket over it. It would be cute if the rest of the body was with it, but nope it’s just the baby’s bottom.

Along with a bakery we have a coffee house. However you would never know we have both unless you came in both the front and back doors. There are no signs in the bakery mentioning a coffee house on the other side and the same goes for the coffee house. Many people still do not know that our coffee house opened five years ago. We are losing so much potential business due to a lack of advertising each other. My bakery is 3 store fronts, so it is larger than most.

When the bakery first opened we got our coffee from a local coffee producer. However due to the hard economy, his business folded. Since than we have bought coffee from a local supermarket and passed it off as a “specialty coffee”. Our regular coffee drinker can tell and have given their business to other coffee houses. As for the people that do not know, I wonder what they would think if they found out?

Um, what happened here? There seems to be everything wrong with this cake. First let us start with the tiers being different sizes. Why are they like this? There is a silly pattern on top of an unleveled tier. The L and the box design around it are crooked along with the pink line around the base of the cake. I wonder what the customer was thinking when ordering this cake. Why did the order taker not tell the customer her cake would come out looking bad? This cake is the perfect example of a badly designed cake!

This is a lion head cake. It is a large round cake and 2 large cupcakes.   The cake and cupcakes are iced tan and than airbrushed to give the lion a little dimension. His face is drawn on using buttercream and chocolate straws for his whiskers. His hair consist of different color icings striped in a bag, than piped out using a grass tip.

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. 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?

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?

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 do not that is his fault that we ran out of supplies.

So baseball is beginning again and I can only imagine how many of theses cakes we will get orders for. Here is a example of a NY Yankees cake that we made over and over again! The cake is entirely fondant with the exception of the writing and baseball laces, which were made with buttercream.

It’s a new time in the world cake decorating. Gone are the times of just going into a bakery and picking a average cake from a book, designing a cake yourself is now in.  Nowadays people want a unique and special cake that no one has ever seen before. So let me give you some tips on how design a cake.

Have a plan of action for what kind of cake you want. Do your research online before you head to the bakery. Go into the bakery with a few ideas, designs, and colors of what you want your cake to look like.  Swatches and picture are always a good starting point for your cake design. Most bakeries do not like to copy other cakes, it just leads to disapppointment with the customers if it is not exact.  However we can make cakes that resemble others. Realize that we want to do exactly what you. We deal with design and color ideas constantly, we knows what will look good. We will advise you on what we think will look the best.  Of course, if you have your heart set on something else, we will design it to the best of our abilities.