I have always been an entrepreneur. My first business was teaching piano, then a Creative Memories Consultant, and then a wedding cake decorator. I had an unofficial business named "Nancy's Fancy's". I know I know...it's the cheesiest thing you've ever heard. I like trying to turn my hobbies into cash. But I found that if I'm trying to make money from them, they're not fun anymore.
Here is the tale of how my hobby went from fun to flat.
The first wedding cake I made was for someone I knew. The quote they got for the cake they wanted was outrageous, so I agreed to do it for half the price, having never assembled a tiered cake before!
It turned out awesome! It was about 18 inches high. Chocolate mousse filling with rolled fondant icing. Since I was driving a sporty little VW GTI at the time, I borrowed my parent's van to deliver it to Cultis Lake.
When we got to exit 176 on the freeway, the transmission died! Colin had to leave me ON THE EXIT in a broken van with a wedding cake to go find a cell phone (back in the day when cell phones weren't a mandatory accessory for every human being) . He got my parents to bring my tiny-trunked car to the exit. Luckily, the cake just BARELY fit in the trunk, and off we went to Cultis Lake (I still don't know how my folks got their dead van home). We got there just as the ceremony was starting.
Cake # 3. Ah yes.
It was a Saturday morning wedding, so the cake needed to be delivered Friday night. I'd baked all the cakes beforehand, and when I got home from school that Friday, I started to decorate. It was a simple 3 tiered circle cake without any decorations, which is actually harder because the decorations hide the imperfections.
I'm icing quickly, since it's only 5 hours away from delivery time. I've got the bottom two tiers done when Colin comes back from school. He dips his finger in the icing and said, "This tastes salty". I say, "you're probably sweaty since it's hot out". He says, "taste it for yourself".
I don't taste the icing usually because I am so sick of the taste by then. I taste it though, and it is AWFUL! Not sweet AT ALL! I get upset and go to scrape it off the cake so I can make a new batch, but THE ICING WON'T COME OFF THE CAKE!! It has solidified hard as rock on there.
I taste the icing sugar I'd purchased out of the bulk bin at Save-On-Foods and it is not icing sugar. It's baking powder. Just so you know, baking powder + milk = ROCKS.
The cake is ruined. And I have to deliver it in 4 hours.
I went to Save-On and asked to speak to the manager. The cashier says, "maybe I can help you. What is the problem?".
Me: "I'd rather speak to the manager, you'll refer me to her anyway"
Cashier: "We usually resolve issues without needing to escalate it to her"
Me: "Ok. I'm a wedding cake decorator and I have a cake to deliver in 4 hours and the icing sugar bin 1080 was filled with baking powder and I iced my cake with it and now it won't come off the cake so not only is the icing ruined, but the cake itself is ruined!" I am crying by now. "I don't even have time to BAKE the cake let alone decorate it again, so I'd like to know what you're going to do about it!".
Cashier: "Let me refer you to the manager".
Well duhh. I told the manager my story and she gave me all the supplies I had wasted to make both the cake and the icing. Then, since I didn't have time to bake the cake again, she gave me big slabs of cake from their bakery so I could cut my cake out of them. I was pretty impressed. Now THAT's conflict resolution!
I still didn't have time to decorate it all that evening so I got the "ok" to deliver it the following morning.
I had to deliver it to Surrey. Not 5 minutes from my home, the driver (who will remain unnamed) slowed down rather abruptly for a red light, and SPLAT! The top tier cascades to the floor of the vehicle along with my sanity.
I had an instant nervous breakdown. As I stared in disbelief, I wondered if I should have kept the rock hard icing on instead.
We got to the location, and I luckily brought extra icing, so I started to fix it. It was not going well. As I said earlier, plain cakes leave little room for error. The icing job has to be perfect. Something needed to be done.
I went into the reception hall and looked for anything I could use to cover up the pancaked spots while the chef was yelling at me to hurry up and get it off his counter. I cut off some of the bows on the chairs and nabbed a flower or two and turned the minimalistic cake topper into a piece of art. A piece of art that covered the whole top tier. A piece of art that people look at say, "huh? What is THAT supposed to be?".
This was the only cake I never photographed.
Friends of ours went to the wedding (it was their cousin getting married). The bride and groom never mentioned that the cake didn't look AT ALL how they ordered it, so I guess they were too pre-occupied to notice.
When you are at my funeral, know that I'd still be around for several years more, had it not been for this sweet confection.
I did a few more after this with a "no delivery" policy, but it was still more stress than it was worth.
So now I do it for fun.
