Hired

I was hired for my first decorating job this week. Personally Yours...Cakes & Confections has officially been born. It was quite the learning experience. Thanks to my mom and Spencer, I was able to finish the project at 4:00 am the day it was getting picked up.

A lady was doing a baby shower for her daughter because it is going to be her daughter's last baby. She wanted 24 cupcakes and she knew EXACTLY what she wanted, bassinets with babies asleep in them sucking on a pacifier. In discussing what flavor of cupcake she wanted, she decided to go with an orange cupcake with a chocolate something in the middle for the guests to enjoy. I thought and thought of what that could be, I could do chocolate pastry cream, but then they would have to be refrigerated. I had decided on putting a chocolate kiss in the middle while they baked. When I asked the pastry chef at school, he had mentioned making ganache balls and freezing them. I liked that idea, so I made orange truffles to put in the middle. When I baked the cupcakes, I discovered that the truffles had melted too fast and had sunk to the bottom of the cupcake. This wasn't good. My mom and I had an idea to hollow a little cake out of the middle of the cupcakes and put a truffle in the middle. That worked. I sealed them with some icing and called it good.

Now, the bottom of the cupcakes were covered in chocolate. It looked SO simple in the picture and sounded simple, but the chocolate was not going on smooth. Not to mention, she wanted the bassinet and the hood in blue. So I melted blue chocolate and white chocolate together, but it didn't turn baby blue. It turned baby green. I finally had the idea to put the chocolate covered cupcakes in a warm muffin pan to smooth them out. That worked. The hoods of the bassinet's weren't cooperating either. My mom ended up doing them twice and staying up until about 2:00am that morning finishing the bassinet hoods. Everything after the chocolate went really well, just time consuming.

Here is a picture of the final cupcake with one of my business cards:
I did four different designs on the sides of the cupcakes. She said that I could do whatever I wanted, so I did:


In the long run, I really enjoyed making these cakes. I haven't heard from her personally, but from my friend that delivered them to her and was there at the shower. She thought they were really cute and seemed pleased about them, except the color, but my friend said that she accepted that and was very happy.

I know now how to work with the chocolate, I had the idea after everything was done to put the chocolate in the muffin pan and place the cupcake in the pan instead of pouring it over like they had instructed. I would REALLY like to see someone get it as smooth as they showed in the picture using this chocolate.