Official Flavor!!

As promised here are the list of our OFFICIAL flavor and names!!

Amaretto Delight - Almond

         It is an almond cake with home made amaretto mixed into the batter a long with minced toasted almonds.

Banana Foster - Banana (Of Course)

         This is created from the traditional breakfast dessert. The batter has rum and banana along with substituted brown sugar and cinnamon. Drizzled with a rum syrup.

Bubbly - Champagne

         This is a fantastic refreshing cake with Brut Champagne inside. Perfect for any celebrations and weddings! Its a light but flavorful cake. Soaked with a champagne reduction for added for a splash more flavor!

Midnight Dream - Chocolate
     
         Is our delectably rich chocolate, moist cake would be any chocolate lovers dream. Chocolate chips added to the batter to give you that added chocolate flavor and texture.
 
Tropical Wonder - Coconut Cream

         This is our tropically wonderful coconut cake that includes coconut oil, milk and shavings to give that coconut cream taste with a splash of pineapple juice to give it depth.

Double Shot - Coffee

           This is every coffee lovers dream. Made with home made from scratch a hazelnut coffee liqueur.   Hazelnut added for depth and flavor, BUT upon special request we can make the double shot hazelnut free for all those allergic.

Lemon Meringue - Lemon

           Our home made lemon cello is added to the batter to give it the add lemon flavor, along with lemon zest. What makes it Meringue is what we top the cupcakes with toasted meringue. The meringue and be added for filling in cake form.

Swirls - Marble

            This is a cake that is best of both worlds. Mixture of our delicious Vanilla and our delectable chocolate.

Nutty Butter- Peanut Butter

           The peanut cakes is crafted with creamy peanut butter. Along with honey rosted peanuts and just a hint of local honey.

Raging Raspberry - Raspberry

          Our homemade raspberry puree added into our tasty batter to give you a subtle but sweet raspberry flavor. It doesn't or will not taste like those artificial cake flavors. We will always use natural raspberries.

Red Velvet -

         Our own twist on the classic Red Velvet. Rich but moist with a creamy texture.

Shimmering Sugar- Vanilla

         THIS is our signature cake flavor. The amazing flavor of vanilla moist and sweet waiting for your enjoyment.

Carte Blanche - White Chocolate

           Lastly our white chocolate cake, this is another of our light feeling cake. The best tasting white chocolate in the batter along with white chocolate chips for that add crunch!

Hope this gets all your mouths watering. Frosting will be out shortly. We do apologize for not having the blog up yesterday. SO for all your disappointments about that I will have ANOTHER blog out later tonight!!

Emotions of a Cake Decorator

There is a list of emotions that happens when I do cakes that are not dummies.

 Before I bake them I get extremely excited and happy to do them. All the ideas start flowing, I plan every little detail out how I am going to do what. Then comes the baking part. After the batter is made and in the oven that is when the anxiety sets in. Thoughts pop in my head like will it turn out? will it even bake? am I even capable of doing this? All of this self doubt happens.

I guess it's because I strive for perfection on each cake the I make. Its my name going out there and I want this to be perfect. My heart and soul goes into every cake I make. They are like my children, that are meant to be eaten, but minor details. I have a lot of self doubt.

After the cake is out of the oven a relief set in. Seeing the cake in its perfection calms the doubt for now.

After it cools and is inspected to make sure that it is still amazing I stack it. Taking lot of time and effort to make sure that it is completely level. Nothing's worse than an unstable cake that's leaning.

Then the anxiety returns when the frosting stage sets in. I'm ok with frosting but I always get nervous to make sure the sides are parallel and the top level. Not to mention trying to get it as smooth as possible to look like fondant. Which I am amazing at. Fondant is the only thing that I am 100% confident with.

After it's covered in fondant or just iced. I have a little moment of relief, if it looks good. Which I'm told it always does, but I always find at least one or two things I think are bad but no one ever notices. The way I look at it is, The day I don't find I mistake or something to work on is the day that I stop striving for perfection.

Then I start to decorate which gives me the most joy because I know the hard parts are behind me. I really do love to decorate it gives me a feeling of accomplishment and happiness. You can always find me smiling unless the cake is giving me attitude then I am frowning but that rarely ever happens.

Yes, cakes do have a personality; each one is different. Most are very pleasant but you will always get that rotten egg that just doesn't want to cooperate. It tries your patients and your sanity but in the end they are the most magnificent work you have ever done because you try your hardest.

Though I do that with every cake I bake. I feel like each is an extension of my self. I strive to show that passion to every one and hopefully they will appropriate it as much as it do.

Flavors Ideas

Creating flavors has to be in my top 5 favorite things I have created for this. I got to be creative and produce what I think would be incredibly delicious.

My first thought was to make 10 base flavors that I would produce year round. Mostly the main flavors everyone loves, but with my own twist. After my brainstorming stage I ended up with 13 total. A few more than I wanted but they are a must have:

Almond

Banana's Foster

Champagne

Chocolate

Coconut Cream

Hazelnut Coffee

Lemon Cello Meringue

Marble

Peanut Butter 

Raspberry 

Red Velvet

Vanilla

White Chocolate

Their names are a work in progress right now, but I think they are a solid group of base flavors.

Then I decided to have a couple seasonal type flavors. There is going to be a seasonal fruit flavor, because come on who doesn't like fruit? Next in rotation there will be beer flavor. I decided to use the local brewed beer. Then there will be a cocktail section. This includes flavors such as margaritas, mojitos, comsopolitian, etc. Lastly there will be misc. flavors these don't quite fit into the other categories.

Fruits:

Spring - Apricot

Summer - Pomegranate 

Fall - Apple

Winter - Cranberry

Beer:

Spring - Belgium Wheat

Summer - IPA

Fall - Triple

Winter - Stout 

Cocktails: 

Spring - Margarita 

Summer - Mojito

Fall - White Russian

Winter - Eggnog

Misc. Seasonal:

Spring - Jello, Dark Chocolate

Summer - Pineapple Upside Down, 

Fall - Pumpkin and Carrot

Winter - German Chocolate, Candy Cane, Black Forest 

** I just want to make something clear to one and all. Just because there is alcohol in a cake does not mean you are drinking it. All the alcohol burns off and the flavors are left behind. It is perfectly safe for children or those of you that do not part take in drinking. I like using alcohol because there is a more complexity of flavors. 

Most of these seasonal flavors are not set in stone, they are most likely to change, I will when I have made a set decision on flavors post a complete final list. This is just to show what I'm thinking of.

Any suggestions or comments are welcome!

Planning Stages

It has been little over a month now that I have been planning Shimmering Sugar. I have at least dedicated 7 - 8 hours each day working and calculating. Let me tell you I feel like I haven't gotten anywhere.

I have finally gotten most of the things on my check list done before I go pitch my dream, to hopefully not get crushed like a little bug, to get silent partners or loans . Though some how as I cross something off, I add another item to do.

Thanks to my Associates degree in baking and pastry I feel like I am more prepared than others, but there are limitations to how prepared one can be. I feel as if there is something big that will magically pop up and throw a chink in everything. Time will tell if my suspicions are right or not.

Not to mention I am so thankful for taking Cost Control in school. I hated it the whole time but in the end it was the right decision. Now I will be able to make sure that I know what my cost are but keeping prices reasonable for the customers too.

Here is my list so far:

Cake and cupcake amount of servings sheet ✔
Pricing Chart
Delivery Cost ✔
Flavors ✔
Webpage ✔
Name ✔
Costing out cakes and cupcakes
Colors ✔
Theme ✔
Recipes ✔
Cake order form ✔
Decorations price chart ✔
Face Book Page
Labor Cost chart ✔
Food cost chart ✔
Food list chart ✔
Material list sheet
Logo ✔
Email ✔
Licensing/permits
Small Business Paperwork
Truck Pricing ✔ 

You could say I have a chart for just about anything. In between testing recipes and all these charts I have been putting all my efforts into costing all my sizes of cakes and cupcakes out. Let me tell you how frustrating it has been, for a me. I am numerically dyslexic. Math was my toughest subject in school because of this. I struggled for every A I got. It may not look like much but I am putting my blood sweat and tears into this.

Literally on the tears. I had a break down last night. I had all the vanilla cake prices costed out and while figuring out the marble that I noticed I had screwed up most of the vanilla. I got threw it and now it is fixed and I can move on. At the time it was just aggregating, I feel more accomplished that I got over that hurdle though.

I should get back to costing out more flavors!