Custom Cake!

A couple weeks ago I got my first ever real form submission on the site from a lady wondering if I do custom cakes. It's a question I get asked fairly regularly at markets and festivals but I honestly hadn't seriously considered doing cakes. While I generally make my own cakes instead of buying a store bought one, I've never considered myself particularly skilled in cake. At least not the decorating part.

I always answer the cake question with something along the lines of I could do a cake but it's not my specialty. So when I responded similarly to her request, I thought for sure I wouldn't hear back. But she responded and was eager to chat about it! She wasn't even deterred when I was honest about my decorating skills and suggested making wafer paper flowers because I suck at piping and hate fondant. I even admitted I've never used wafer paper before. It was just something I've been interested in playing with for awhile. I'm pretty good at paper crafts so I was confident I could figure it out.

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I was shocked when she confirmed the commission. Especially considering she got a quote from another bakery that wanted to use real flowers for a little over half the price I quoted. Real flowers. On a cake. This may be an unpopular opinion but that weirds me out. Mostly because I'd be surprised if any bakery in my area orders food safe flowers. I've looked. You can only get real, food safe flowers that are free of pesticides, fertilizer, dyes, etc. online. Considering the bakery she talked to didn't seem at all concerned about the timeline to get the flowers, I feel it's pretty safe to assume, they're just going down to the local florist. Granted, it seems to be common practice to do that, give them a good wash then wrap the stems in supposedly non toxic floral tape. Most of the wafer paper flower tutorials I found also used floral wire wrapped in tape for the stems. Eww. So gross. I don't care if floral tape is supposed to be non toxic. The thought of having it in a cake is repulsive. How did that ever become a thing?? Not to mention you're entrusting whether or not you end up eating a bunch of toxins to a random stranger who may or may not be good at ensuring every millimeter of the stalk and wherever the flower touches the cake is covered with tape. I'd rather not take my chances.

Anyhoo, I had a mild anxiety attack when it sank in that I actually had to make the cake now and only had a little over a week to get my shit together. The last thing I wanted to do was potentially ruin her 25th wedding anniversary. Especially considering the goal for the cake was to sort of give her the wedding cake she wanted but didn't quite get.

Being woefully unemployed and struggling to get online orders for the bakery actually came in handy that week. Gave me the time I needed to focus on not fucking up the cake.

I focused on the flowers first. If I couldn't figure out how to work with wafer paper, I needed to let her know asap so she still had time to get someone else. Thankfully, my assumption was correct and working with wafer paper is very similar to regular paper crafts from a general construction perspective. The tricky part was figuring out the moisture content. It only took three prototype flowers to figure it out. I'm pretty proud of myself for that.

Once I got the flowers down, the ruffles were stupid easy. I even made a couple butterflies and used the gum paste to make some lady bugs and spiral things. I ended up only using the flowers and ruffles because I didn't like how they looked all together but still useful experiments.

The next challenge was making a test cake to make sure I got the flavors right and remind me what it's like to make a layered cake. She wanted a lemon cake with lemon cream cheese buttercream frosting and a raspberry filling. I'm not particularly fond of either of those flavors. I rarely use lemon and never use raspberry. Fortunately, I found recipes that use real lemon juice and raspberries. I dislike using extracts. Especially when I have a deadline and don't have time to do a bunch of flavor tests.

I was so nervous the day she came by to try it. I basically made a prototype of the top tier so I could also get feedback on size, color, and floral design. It looked like crap. The shade of blue was wrong, the frosting was a mess, the ruffles were fine but I used the prototype flowers that looked wilted, and I knew there wasn't going to be enough raspberry filling. The recipe said to let it sit in the fridge for at least an hour but that was a lie. Most of it oozed out the sides and ended up in the trash during the frantic cleanup process. To my surprise she loved it. Only slightly negative feedback was about the raspberry which was an easy fix.

I made the cakes the day before the event without any major issues. My biggest problem was lack of focus. Financial woes, job search stress, etc. had me on the struggle bus. Originally I planned on getting the cakes made, each tier assembled and at least crumb coated the day before. That didn't happen. I only managed to get the cakes made. I wasn't super concerned about it, though. I wake up at 5am whether I want to or not every day and the party wasn't until 5pm. Even if a catastrophe happened, I'd have time to fix it.

Event day went almost perfectly. I still can't believe it. I was so anxious throughout the whole assembly process, my hands were trembling. Thought for sure I was gonna drop it at some point. Getting the completed cake off the turntable and into the box was seriously nerve wracking. The only other almost major issue was the ridiculously steep incline of the venue parking lot. Holding the handle of a giant cake box while parking wasn't on my list of potential disasters. But I survived and the cake handled the slight jostling beautifully. Huzzah!

Watching everyone's initial reaction to seeing the cake was amazing. I don't think I've ever been so happy leaving a job. I mean, I'm always happy leaving a job but the job usually makes me so miserable all the joy gets sucked out of the happy.

I didn't fully relax until the party started, though. I delivered the cake a few hours before so we put it in the fridge. They still had to move it from the fridge to the party room. I offered to come back and fix any issues encountered during transport if needed. When I didn't get a phone call, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

It's now the day after and I just got an update from my customer while writing this. She's so happy. The cake got a ton of compliments and everyone liked the flavor so much they almost ate it all. Yay!