Wedding Cake Over- Phew!

Alright kids, the wedding cake is finally finished, and I'm so friggin relieved! While I planned and orchestrated the whole thing beautifully, I was still apprehensive about the result when it really came down to it. I'd say this is just from being inexperienced, and maybe with a little sprinkle of control freakness, but there's also a bit of "that's just life" to it too. Okay, so I started out last week right after I wrote the blog entry for the week, doing some research on my favorite food site, egullet. I really needed to figure out how much cake to make to make sure that 250 people were going to get fed. I found the answer to that question, but then ended up reading all these horror stories from cake decoration pros about transport issues, leaving things to the last minute and of course, bridezillas and their complaints about things that weren't the cake maker's fault but they were blamed for anyway. So I went back to my giant kitchen (did I ever tell you, dear readers, that my kitchen is huge? it really has a great amount of space for just one person to do all the projects I get to work on, so much more than the average pastry chef, and certainly more than the rest of the kitchen staff gets.) and started figuring out how to execute the plan I had made for the cake baking and decoration process. For me, the entire week was about this cake. I didn't want to get caught with my pants down about ingredient amounts, or finishing things on time, or anything getting screwed up enough that I had to do it over again or running out of something. I broke it down into a couple of pieces and attacked each one as it came up. Of course, the restaurant was also running at normal pace, so I had to keep up with that while constantly thinking about the cake process. To top it off, the entire bakery case that people buy things to go from, had been cleaned out by the staff after the wedding that Sunday, so I also had to fill up the case while I was completely obsessed with the cake! Whatever, it got done.

I baked an entire 3 extra layers, one of each kind, just in case something broke. On Thursday night I ran into the only hitch, the hexagon. Please, just take a moment right now and try to figure out how to draw a hexagon.

If you've got it already, where were you when I needed you on Thursday night? A very good friend of mine and I ended up spending about 2 hours figuring out how to do this. I never could have done it without her. It involves drawing 120 degree arcs that meet in the exact center of a circle in order to figure out where the corners should be so that all the sides are the exact same length. We had to go to my house to search for a compass, which I surprisingly had, but had never used in my life. The only reason I had it is because I went through a brief period where I wanted to learn how to draw. Well, I did learn the basics, and to take my time, but I also learned I didn't have that instinctual talent, and as everyone knows, I don't like to work hard at learning something. But I never got rid of my drawing supplies, and there you are. I would have been lost without a compass....(I know, bad pun, but sometimes my dad just climbs up and out of my throat and just can't stop it.) So the templates for the cake bases got formed and I went home for the evening, totally set.

The next morning, I set to work cutting all the presentation cake pieces. Then I filled, frosted and glazed them and they went to live for a day in the fridge to harden. The sheet cakes were attacked next, and they were filled and frosted but not glazed by night's end. Those fuckers were heavy though, like at least 20 lbs a piece. I almost dropped one while putting it away in the walk in fridge that night. Saturday morning saw me glazing the sheet cakes with the last of my white chocolate. I had no more chocolate, so I really needed to stretch it. The car got packed up just fine, and we left for the country club where I would assemble the cake and put on the finishing touches.

Now here's where the control freak in me came out. We couldn't take my car, because it just wasn't big enough for a cake like this. We took Greg, the chef's car, which is a Jeep Grand Cherokee, but it had no a/c. It was raining, and I was glad for the coolness in the air, but I was also freaked out because it was raining, and also because I wasn't driving my very first wedding cake to its star appearance. Whatever, I closed my eyes and didn't watch the road, even though Greg assured me that he transports food for a living and that I just needed to relax and exude confidence.

So we arrived. The place where the wedding was taking place was amazing. It was in a truly drop dead gorgeous building, very Rockefeller-esque to me. Gigantic entry doors, a very uniquely shaped grand staircase, probably 15 or 20 foot ceilings. Just beautiful, but also extremely pretentious. Now I don't know if I told you how this gig came about, as I am not prestigious, let alone pretentious in any way about myself or what I do, (I may think the whole idea of foams in the recent trends of food is ridiculous, but I don't take myself too seriously about it, and I'd never turn down trying them.) The point is, my bosses have been trying to get this country club to buy their desserts wholesale on a standing order for a while. For some reason unbeknownst to me, the country club referred the wedding couple to us when they mentioned they were in the market for the cake. I met the couple, and even though they hadn't tasted any of my products, they fell in love with me and decided that I would be their cake baker. Later on we had the tasting and their suspicions of me turned out to be right, so it all worked out. But there were other things going on besides a happy wedding couple. As I mentioned, the bosses have been trying to woo the country club. As part of a thank you sort of, they offered the price of the cake at a $100 discount, but not even knowing what the cake would cost us. So there was a lot riding on this cake, if the wedding party was happy, and the cake was beautiful, maybe the country club would consider buying more stuff from us for themselves. I tried to put it out of my mind during the whole process, but it was still there, laying on a little pressure. This translated to a bit more nerves being wracked than I think normally would have been, for me. I don't remember if I mentioned it earlier, but I lost a few accounts for the bakery earlier in the month because even though I'm sure the cakes I baked for them tasted great, they weren't the same height the customer had been buying, and they would have had to change their prices and they were very upset. Given, it wasn't exactly the same product, but something else was going on here too. The boss who is Tony Danza's doppelganger (and basically a jackass) is the sales rep for these accounts. He never mentioned to his clients that he was going to be getting a new pastry chef until they got pissed. I'm sorry, but if I were Evil Tony, I would have prepared them and asked for their feedback and support. What an asshole! So for me to score big with this new establishment was exrremely important.

But back to the cake assembly. Even though y'all probably think I'm comfortable in almost any situation with strangers, sometimes I'm not. On meeting the catering director, who was very "Jackie O" I won't say that I felt uncomfortable in my own skin, but I definitely put my foot in my mouth like it was my thumb. We assembled the cake, which to me was huge. We had just enough whipped ganache to fill in the spaces between layers, and the cake was a tiny bit lopsided because I didn't insert the dowels in the layers evenly, or enough. You have to put dowels in a cake to support the weight of it, otherwise one bump or maybe even no bump at all and the cake may collapse in on itself or worse, topple onto the floor or someone else. Then you've got a big mess and no cake! So we just decided to tell them that one particular side was the front. We finished the assembly and took some photos, which I promise I'll post when I get them from the restaurant. Then I wanted to talk to the person who would be cutting the cake to warn them about the cookie crust.

In some places, the crust was brittle, and might be a little thicker than in others. The cake appeared to be a regular wedding cake from the outside and I didn't want there to be any surprises. So I went into the kitchen to find the sous chef, Felix (I don't think I've ever met a Felix, I was so excited to finally meet one who wasn't a naughty cartoon cat), who I was told would be cutting the cake. This was where the pretentious air hit me like a ton of bricks. Every single person in that kitchen was wearing the culinary condom, or the big, giant toque, even the minions. Now I completely don't wear those, and neither does anyone else at our place. We wear baseball caps or bandanas. The whole toque thing sets up an attitude that just doesn't jive with my existence. I know, it's just a hat, but you know what? It's not just a hat.

So Felix was nowhere to be found. The minion I was speaking to asked me if I wanted to talk to the executive chef instead. I figured that was my only option, even if I didn't like it, and accepted. Tom, the exec chef, looked at me pretty funny when the minion brought me to his attention. I was feeling lucky that I was wearing my chef's jacket, so at least I looked professional. Once I told him who I was a look of recognition of my status came over his face and I felt a little better. Then we went to go see the cake. Now I had brought those two extra sheet cakes as backup. I'd say that the presentation cake had about 140 portions going on, and each sheet cake could feed 70 at least, so I bet we could have cut about 280 portions. I told the chef my concerns about the slicing of the cake, and he looked at my presentation cake and said,

"Wait, you said you brought two sheet cakes?"
Me: "Yep."
"Two full sheet cakes?"
Me: "Yep."
"Okay. For a minute there I was worried that you weren't giving me much to work with with this little cake."

I immediately thought "No you didn't!" I couldn't believe he called my cake little! Okay, so the bottom tier was 15 inches across, and the cake was on a 36 inch table, so it may have been a little dwarfed by the table, but come on! It was certainly NOT little. I was infuriated, but I smiled and replied that I was sure everything would be fine, and we jetted out of there. I was so relieved. But there was still the matter of how everything went over.

Today, two days later, I called over to the country club to find out. While I didn't reach Jackie O, the catering director, I did leave her a voicemail to let her know I wanted to follow up on how the cake went over. She left me a message about 15 minutes later, telling me that she had actually tasted the cake, and that she never tastes cakes because they do a hell of a lot of weddings there, and you know, they're usually just normal, ass, wedding cakes. She said the cake was great, that it sliced beautifully, and that there was plenty. So much in fact that the bride's mom had just left with the top tier, which the couple had said they didn't care about when we discussed it! Jackie O also said that she lived in a town right next to the town my place is in and that she would definitely be stopping by to say hello sometime. That last comment right there is what this whole thing was really about. I'm so super happy. I did it folks!

The numbers for the cake are as follows:

30.6# sugar
4# egg yolks
12.5# whole eggs
39.66# butter
2 cups + 7 tbsp vanilla extract
15.75# white chocolate
4# heavy cream
100 g salt
240 g instant coffee
6.16# sour cream
33.29# all purpose flour
3.52# cocoa powder
40 g baking soda
70 g baking powder
13# 2 oz light brown sugar
6.25# chocolate chips

Crazy!

On a completely different note, a few exciting things. If you drank anything alcoholic with me last summer in Westchester, you'd know I'm completely into the mojito. I'm not talking about just any mojito though. I put together a few different mojito recipes last year with a friend and we came up with one that's made with mango rum, mint and basil, simple syrup, and you make the ice cubes out of lime juice, so that as they melt, the drink gets better, not watered down. The same friend brought my attention to an article in Gourmet last month, featuring a dessert that's basically a passion fruit gelee with a basil cream. You put the gelee by itself into a glass and then let it set up while you tilt the glass so that it sets up diagonally in the glass. Then you pour the cream into the glass and voila, you've got a super cool looking dessert. I want to put my mojito spin on it, so that's in the works for this week.

Ever since I put that brownie-tini on the menu, dessert sales have been up, and even though it's a gimmic, doing things in a glass that look cool is part of what sells more desserts. Now here's where my business sense is a little different than that of the owners. The owners are always focusing on the wholesale end, trying to get standing orders. I think that's a mistake. I think we should focus on the retail arena. You make more money per unit, and you get more recognition overall instead of someone else taking the credit. I think we need to be pushing dessert sales more in the restaurant, and I think we need to call a few local rags and make them think that there's something to write about here. Goddam, if I can write about it, why can't they? It would be great pubilicity for the restaurant, and instead of dessert sales making up only 10-15% of overall sales, it could be more. It could be people coming in because they read a story about the desserts, but having dinner just to get to dessert. Or maybe we should have a backwards dinner. The same friend who helped on the mojito told me recently about when she was a kid, her church used to do "regressive dinners." A few families would make all the food for the church group. One family would be charged with each course, and they'd go to each family's house for each part. The twist is that they would start with dessert, then go to the entree house, and then the salad house, then the appetizer house. Damn, I think that's the best idea a church has ever had, you know, besides homeless shelters and do gooder stuff. Anyway, there's a lot to think about here. I need to present my ideas, I really do. There's also this part of me that's way more interested in the individual dessert stuff and the breads than the wholesale business. I'll admit it, I think the cakes are cool, but a lot of effort for little money. I guess the trick is to present my ideas without sounding like I think I know everything, cause I know I don't, and it's not my restaurant.

Exciting thing #2:

Started making a daily cobbler. It's been a great product and the owners are pumped. I'm pumped too, you know I love a cobbler more than most desserts.

Exciting thing #3:

Made the best focaccia of my life this week. If you like focaccia in any way, make sure you stop by sometime on a Saturday, as I always make it then.

Exciting thing #4:

Made sticky buns for brunch this week. They ruled, and someone on the floor commented that she's usually very particular about her sticky buns, and that mine were yummy.

Thanks for reading, and if you don't comment, I don't know you're out there reading the blog!

You guys rule!