So I have been working with Ron now for almost 5 years.   Most of my time is spent “front of house” so to speak.  However, I still get to “observe” the daily happenings of the production room and kitchen.

Because I am always up for a challenge, I thought that I would make a min-cake for a friend of mine out of cake scraps.  I made my own tiers by using circle cutters with the cake scraps.  I filled the cake, and did tops and sides, just like our head chef. Because my little cake was so small and it was on a make shift cake board, this was very difficult for me trying to get my buttercream all even.  I had to frost the cake while it was on the palm of my hand. Once my cake was filled and the tops and sides of my little cake were buttercreamed, I put it in the fridge to let the buttercream get firm.

Now it was time to try my hand at fondanting.  It took me two tries but I did it.  Now working here, we have a fancy sheeter that rolls our fondant very thin.  I have only eaten fondant and never covered a cake.  I watched my head chef do this over and over again and I am always so intrigued as to how he gets these cakes to look perfect.  I can tell you right now, covering a cake in fondant is DIFFICULT.

Once my little cake was covered in white fondant, I put it in the fridge.  I then rolled out yellow and green sugar paste to make my little circle cutouts to decorate with.  I also did a “J” on the top of my little cake to personalize it more.  I put a band at the base of the tier and as a finishing touch, added a little “disco”.  Decorating my little cake was really fun.  But was very time consuming, and I had to exercise a lot of patience with a much needed steady hand.

After my little challenge, I have never appreciated my staff more than I do now.  They make everything look effortless.  But what they really have is skill.  Each member of our staff has their own unique artistic gifts.  Combine all of these gifts together and have Ron as their leader and there is your reason why our work looks the way that it does.  Their execution in this medium is remarkable and their pride in the their work is bar none.  So this holiday season I am thankful in my life that I can come to a job that I absolutely adore and work with this incredible group of people.  And I learned all of this from making a little cake out of scraps…