Mother's Day

At the bakery I interned at I wasn't allowed to work on cake orders. I had very little experience and couldn't be trusted to mess with a cake that somebody had high expectations for. I figured the only way I would be able to practice decorating was if I ordered a cake myself, and I made one for my mom.

I made her an orange cake with ganache and butter cream decorations. I made the cake myself, and I tried my hand at layering and crumb coating. I was told to put on a base of white butter cream and let it chill for awhile. One of the decorators helped me pour warm ganache over the cake. Once that set then I tried drawing some sort of vines that crawled up the sides of the cake. I did the orange roses on top too. I had been taught previously how to make them and caught on quickly. Even though I was the novice I made roses better than the decorators.

I thought the way we did the ganache was a bit awkward and it wasn't until recently that I learned how to pour icing over cakes properly. Perhaps it wasn't such a good idea to try and put butter cream as a base, because it did end up melting a bit and making the ganache uneven. Either I should have done a better job of evening out the cake, or we could have covered the cake in sheets of marzipan. That's something else I could try to learn if I ever get to work in a professional bakery.