What's a Break?

For about 2 months straight, I drove my self crazy keeping insanely busy from the moment I woke up until the moment I fell asleep (some nights I kept busy taking care of baby instead of sleeping).  All of the busyness was related to working in some capacity or another with nearly no time for fun, grooming, cleaning or relaxing.  As you know I was juggling being a pseudo-single mom, working full time, hosting celebrations and the cakeaholic business.  The last weekend in January was the tip of the ice berg.  From the previous 2 posts, you can see that between work, planning Noah’s birthday, my migraine, an unexpected meeting, and a large cake order my heart felt like it was going to pound right out of my chest all weekend, I couldn’t sleep, and I felt like I could vomit and/or faint at any given moment.

The majority of the orders I receive are placed “last minute” with less than a week’s notice.  So when I didn’t have any February orders lined up – I wasn’t surprised, and made the decision to decline any orders for the whole month of February.  Frankly, I needed a break, and at this time, caking is the only activity I am able to cut.  Well… my “cake break” lasted one whole week.  By the second week in February I was scheduling each of my nights, baking, decorating and running to the craft store for supplies.  HA!  There is no way I could last a whole month off, especially with Valentine’s day around the corner… So, I made a bunch of conversation heart cake pops for my coworkers.  

Using advice from the queen bee of cake pops – I purchased edible markers to write the notes on the conversation hearts.  Just to find out that the ink doesn’t like the hard shell coating texture of the pops.  So, I ended up using a toothpick and gel colorings mixed with Vodka (this dissolves keeping it safe for kids to consume and tasteless) to write each message out.  They were a big hit – most of my co-workers brought some home to share with their loved ones.

Bringing in the conversation heart cake pops also resulted in a small Valentine order.  I swore that I was going to decline any orders – but this was such a small cake, and the person who ordered it pretty much gave me full creative freedom to do whatever I wanted on this cake.  He told me the flavor he wanted, and to put a message like “happy valentines day” or “be mine” or “I love you” or whatever fit and a heart on it.  J I love making these kinds of cakes – where the client doesn’t have a specific design in mind.  So I was really excited to make this cake, no stress involved in it at all since it was so small, I had all weekend to do it, and I had could basically do whatever I wanted with this cake – just keeping Valentine’s day in mind.  This is what I came up with:

 I love the way this cake turned out.  It was not inspired by any other cake design I have seen and was truly my own design. 

When I gave him the cake, he thought I bought the bee and couldn’t believe that not only did I make the bee but that the bee was completely edible J I love to hear that kind of feedback!

Anyway, I really do plan on taking the rest of the month off from caking… whether I stick to that plan or not is to be debated.  I hope you all had a wonderful love day!  Thanks for reading.

Cheers,

Tam a Lam

www.Cakeaholiccakery.com