So the same lady who wants the baby cakes wants us to make cookies in the shape of pandas for a shower she has to go to two months before the wedding. There was all this hullabaloo about finding molds for the pandas. The bosses ended up getting cookie cutters that just look like teddy bears, not pandas specifically. So I had to make them into pandas with fondant. Do you know how much it takes to make fondant black? For some reason all the black food dyes out there seem to be more of a dark green than a black. I haven’t heard yet whether she was into the samples I made yet, but I’ll know when I go in tomorrow.
On a sad note, in a slip, the chef said something to me that totally set me off. He told me not to over think something “like a woman”. I couldn’t believe it. I spent the next 24 hours livid, but then spoke to him the next day about it. I think he got why I was upset, and he apologized, but I also had to explain to him that the reason I was so mad was probably also because not only had the Turtle tried to grab my ass last week, but that I was getting overwhelmed at work with all the responsibility and wanted some help getting more organized. To have him say the woman crap was just the icing so to speak, and it got me really down that day. So much so that I finished up what I was doing and went home to get drunk almost immediately, not something I normally do. I was just so pissed that the person that I relate to the most of all the owners had then said something so thoughtless.
Brunch has almost been conquered. This week I was finally able to be totally prepped for brunch by the Saturday night before it, and I was able to come in and bang everything out relatively quickly that day. My only problem is that I need to get some cool Danish type thing happening. I have this Danish dough already, that all I have to do is roll it out, but I have a hard time knowing exactly what to do with it, such as how to make it stick together when you make a little packet out of it, and how large to make it so that you can fit a good amount of filling in there. So, now I’m calling for all favorite Danish fillings, if y’all have any!
The cream cheese frosting that I made last week for the carrot cake actually worked out, so that’s good. But it needs to be stiffer; I wonder how I can achieve that besides leaving it in the fridge for an hour or so.
I also made my first loaf of bread from the new starter. It didn’t rise very much, but it was definitely edible and had a good crust, light colored as it was. As I understand it, the loaves made with a new starter only get better and better, as in, the 5th loaf is always better than the 1st. So I’ve got only good things to look forward to as long as I keep my little pet bread alive. I think I’ll call it Fatima, just because I know Salena would like that.
I saved the big news (even though it’s really small) for last. I had two different Westchester Magazine situations this week. On Thursday, I had a writer come in to do the tasting for the kiddie desserts all grown up story. She was super cool, and I was able to give her the oreo napoleon and the milkshake flight. Honestly, I had designed the milkshake flights only an hour previously, and while I was happy with the peanut butter banana one and the strawberry one, I thought the pistachio and pepper one could have been way better. She seemed to have the same opinion, at least from the amount of each that she had, and she also seemed to like the napoleon. The weirdest part was when she asked me specifically why I was doing these types of desserts. While the real reason was that I just need the publicity, I told her that it was just for fun, and that everybody experiences food in such a personal way, but this can be nostalgic, even for people of different generations, blah blah blah. Man, there is still so much bullshit in life. Even though I would’ve loved to be straight with her, you just can’t write that in an article, and I knew that was the purpose of even posing that question. I’ll have to work on my bullshitting so it’s more of the upfront me and less what I think journalists want to hear. I also got a call last week that they were doing a tasting at the magazine offices of chocolate chip cookies. So I dropped some there today on my way to do my laundry, on my day off! I really hope those cookies make a good impression, as I need to get my name out there to get people excited about the retail end of this place. The owners have been pushing me to come up with some cakes we can offer to the old wholesale people, but I haven’t had time to experiment and I have to admit that I’m not interested in that, even though that seems to be where the money comes from, at least on a guaranteed, regular basis. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want it though, as it seems I’m finally getting a handle on the rest of the stuff, at least in theory.
Alright kids, I’ll try to bring in my camera this week and take some photos of the stuff I’ve been making so y’all can see it.
Have a great week!
