Saturday 1 June 2013

Stepping outside my comfort zone

This week has been a really busy one for me, this is why I'm updating so late. I've been baking what feels like non-stop. This week I'd been asked to create a cake that I've always avoided (until now) or I just plain don't feel comfortable doing *Cue dramatic music* a two-tiered, fully edible engagement cake (eeeeeek).

I'm usually really confident making round cakes and stacking them. But I knew there was a little more to stacking two fully-edible cakes, i.e dowels, measuring etc. I have stacked cakes before, in fact the first ever cake I had made was for my niece and it was a two-tiered princess cake, but I was (until now) only confident using one edible tier and one dummy tier. I received the message asking if I could make a two-tiered, fully edible engagement cake and my nerves were just gone. I wanted to so badly to say no but the person who asked me is super-lovely and I really didn't want to turn them down since it was a compliment in itself that I was the first person they came to. Without even thinking of the hurdles I'd have to face I accepted. After-all how hard could stacking cakes possibly be? The weeks in between making the cakes I tried not to over-face myself with thoughts of what could go wrong and in my mind the cake had already come out perfect. I had decided not to do too much research into cake stacking and to just kind of go with the flow, you know? Use my initiative. My common sense. I mean I more or less started baking using my initiative, I wasn't taught, so it was just a case of going back to basics. I knew what materials I needed and I had a rough idea of how to do it so I went ahead and did it. And it turned out better than I'd anticipated. I have to admit while my cake was in the oven I had a glance over 'The Cake Decorating Bible' by Juliet Sear of Fancy Nancy, she has wonderfully put together a few pages on how to stack cakes. I didn't read into too much detail just looked over the pictures and skimmed because I was too afraid I'd have forgotten to buy something or had the technique wrong in my head. Needless to say I overcame my hurdle and will most definitely not be letting this nor anything else get in my way again. 






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