Summer work… July 17, 2008
So we are knee deep into summer finally and I have been incredibly neglectful of my blog. I have been writing entries in my head for weeks, but alotta good that does the blog! You gotta get in front of the computer Indira and WRITE the thoughts, observations, etc down!!!
So let me see how I can condense the last 2 months….
I don’t think I will keep it all in chronological order, that hurts my brain too much.
The biggest news of the last 2 months is Jelsen and Bahareh’s wedding on June 26th. As some might recall, they came to me looking for an awesome wedding cake and a Viennese table in early May. The wedding cake was inspired by a picture from a European magazine they brought to me and then asked for the personal touch of the golden lego pieces as their topper. My dear friend Anne Heap of Pink Cake Box, made the cake in her beautiful shop, and I created a table full of sweets. Coconut -sweet potato tarts, lemon curd tarts, chocolate macaroons sandwiched between a dark chocolate ganache, (the bane of my existence for 3 weeks!!!!!!), mini carrot cupcakes with cream cheese icing, assorted cookies, and croquembouche puffs filled with vanilla pastry cream.
Unfortunately I was so involved in prepping, baking, and packaging all the sweets I did not take many pictures. Lesson learned!!!!!!!! I did manage to take a few in the beginning of the baking madness that was Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday morning…
As I mentioned earlier, this was just a VERY small sampling of what I made. I am kicking myself right now, that I didn’t force myself to take more pictures. It was just a lot to do and I was getting overwhelmed and the clock was ticking. I am only human and I had reached my limit. So I will have to stop kicking myself and just be glad that I have these at least. The picture of the bride and groom and the wedding cake are courtesy of Stephanie Land, a good friend and photographer of the happy couple.
This wedding was my first real big job as “Indira the Sweet”, so I was trying to be as diligent and detail oriented as I have been training myself to be! Some of the prep work was fun and some painful. Fun was ordering new kitchen items like mini tart tins and mini cupcake pans, painful was having to keep buying expensive almond flour to perfect the elusive french macaroon. The chocolate ones proved to be easier than the plain ones. I had to have made about 6-7 batches of the plain variety with very little success. They were turning out flat and not at all round. It was incredibly frustrating. I finally had to give up and just fill in the order with ALL chocolate. I hated not being able to figure it out in time for the wedding, but I had warned Bahareh that I had not attempted these difficult pastries since my days in culinary school way back in 2005!! Sometimes, you have to know when to say “UNCLE” and figure out a new path. Painful, but not deadly. I got everything done in a fairly timely fashion.
I made lists every other day changing one thing or another. It might seem silly, but it really helps to get lists out of your head and on to paper where you can REALLY see how things look. All the lists I made helped keep me stay organized and on schedule. I learned a WHOLE lot on this job, but it paid off in the end. I got a lovely email from the bride herself and then more raves when I saw both Jelsen and Bahareh on July 4th, for one of two BBQ I attended. All the hard work and planning was WELL worth the stress and I look forward to my next…
