Day Fifteen

I did a variety of things at the Art of Cake on my last day. I started by inserting the last week few students of the cake camp into Tammy's contact list on her gmail account. While I was doing that Tammy ran to the store to buy some eggs. She agreed not to do a lot of cakes at this time of the year because it would be crazy, so she is only making three - one for me, one for her daughter, and one for her best friend's daughter - all for graduations. The Boston creme cake, strawberry shortcake, and cannoli cake all require a vanilla cake base. I was responsible for making a large quantity of the vanilla cake base, and the amount of batter I used filled up three half-sheets, for one two-layer cake and two three-layer cakes. I measured all the ingredients using the scale and then I got to use the giant mixer for the first time. Scraping the huge bowl with the spatula was pretty difficult, but overall I had fun. 

After the cake batter was done, I scooped 1000 grams of it onto each half-sheet and Tammy spread it across the pan. At the same time I was finally able to meet Brenda, another lady who works at the bakery. She has been busy fixing her house to put it on the market before she leaves to move to Florida. 

Lastly, I sat at the front desk for a while and made calls to all the students who filled out a registration form with a phone number and no email. I needed everyone's email because it's easier to contact them that way rather than make a bunch of calls. When I finished, my brother came to pick me up and together we chose the logos to decorate our graduation cake with, since he also graduated this year. 

Day Fourteen

I spent all of today sitting at Tammy's laptop on her email account. I went through the camp binder and one by one inserted each name, phone number, email, and address into her gmail account as a new contact. It was a very tedious process and I found it difficult to the handwriting on each registration form. I separated all the contacts by week and then by morning or afternoon session. Most of the kids are from bergen county, but she even had one client for her baking class from New York! I input almost a hundred contacts.

Tammy wanted to give something to me in return for volunteering the past few weeks, so she decided that together, we would bake a half sheet cake for my graduation party this Saturday. She gave us the top four filling and cake combinations to choose from, and in the end my brother and I chose a boston creme cake. I am so excited to help Tammy bake and decorate my very own cake!

Day Thirteen

I was pretty excited when I walked in the bakery today, to hear that we would we baking cake pops. There were many tiers of chocolate and carrot cake in the freezer, so Tammy took them out and we began taking them apart. For a while, Tammy and I stood there breaking all the slices of cake and then crumbling them into very fine grains. I crumbled all the chocolate cake and then Tammy rolled them into bite sized balls. She placed them on a baking sheet.

I finished crumbling the carrot cake that Tammy started, and when it was time to roll them into balls we discovered that the cake wasn't sticking together. To help form the balls of carrot cake, Tammy added some cream cheese frosting into the bowl of cake crumbs. I was able to use all the crumbs and roll a bunch of cake pop balls - it was extremely greasy. As we were rolling the cake crumbs, we both agreed that the cake pops look pretty unappetizing, but nobody realizes it after they are covered in chocolate. 

After we used up all the cake crumbs, we put the sheets into the freezer for them to harden. On another day, they will be dipped and decorated!

Day Twelve

Another one of Tammy's friends asked for her help on a fundraiser Family Promise is hosting in Hackensack. The charity houses homeless people, and Tammy is just to provide a few desserts for that night's event. From the previous day's baking, we still had some leftover mini red velvet cupcakes, so we packaged those. Basically, we used a lot of leftovers and previously baked things were taken out of the freezer.

Tammy had frozen balls of gluten-free almond butter cookies in the freezer. She rolled them in powdered sugar, laid some out on a pan and baked them, but they weren't very presentable. The cookies were very crumbly and messy, but tasted pretty good anyway. Tammy debated a while about providing them for Family Promise, but figured they would appreciate anything she gave them. To make them taste a little better and to add color, we filled them with apricot and raspberry jam by piping a dot on the cookies before baking them in the oven. In addition to the mini cupcakes and powdered cookies, Tammy found some packaged macarons she didn't want anymore. We wrapped all these desserts and brought them in the front for Tammy's friend at Family Promise to pick up later today!

Day Eleven

I got right to work once I entered the bakery - Tammy had me do some math and divide the recipe into a smaller amount, then convert everything into ounces. Once I calculated all the new numbers, I measured everything and used to mixer to basically make the red velvet batter all by myself. The batter was very messy and went everywhere as well as stained my hands. When I finished mixing the batter according to the directions, I lined about ten sheets of cupcake pans. Six of them were mini, and four of them were regular size. I used a small scoop to fill the mini cupcakes, and measured 38 grams of batter into the regular sized cupcakes.

While they were baking in the oven, Tammy explained to me that we were preparing to help one of her friends with an event since he owns a catering business and needs desserts, mainly cupcakes. To add to the amount, we took more chocolate and carrot cake cupcakes from the freezer and arranged them on the large tray. Tammy went out back and got a large bowl of cream cheese frosting, which we piped on the carrot cake cupcakes, and eventually also on the freshly baked red velvet cupcakes. We used pink buttercream for the chocolate ones.

After we wrapped the trays and prepared them to be given to her friend, I finally got the chance to meet Paige, Tammy's daughter who is also attending Middlebury College next year!

Day Ten

For some reason, the last few recipes I typed up when I worked on the camp book last week didn't save onto the laptop. I had to type up some recipes for a second time. When it was time to print, we realized that there was no more computer paper in the printer. Luckily, Tammy had a huge stack of stationary paper which I printed the recipes on after centering it on the page. 

As I was printing, Tammy was still returning all her calls from the weekend. When she was done the two of us baked some more vanilla cake for the summer camp, since there can never be enough; the more cakes Tammy has in the freezer for the camp, the less hectic those few weeks are. Similar to what I had done on another day, I evenly poured batter into the pans after spraying them with the non-stick spray. I also wrapped them after they cooled, and put them in the freezer which is packed with baked cakes. Soon, we are going to have to start storing cakes in the big walk-in freezer out back. I ended the day by folding a few more boxes. 

Day Nine

On Thursday, I spent a few hours at the bakery. As Tammy was listening to all the messages that were left on her voicemail after being away for a few days, I used a small core tool to take out the insides of seventy-two cupcakes. Later that day, a girl scout troop came in to celebrate the end of the year by decorating some cupcakes. Tammy made some buttercream and whipped it up in the mixer, then placed it in a piping bag. I piped the buttercream into the insides of the cupcakes to fill them, and Tammy swirled white buttercream on top. 

Afterwards, Tammy and I rolled out fondant in six different colors. I cut them, rolled them into balls, and put one of each color into a separate bag, so each of the twelve girls would have every color of fondant to decorate their cupcakes with. Then I folded a few boxes. As I finished, Mary arrived and took my place, so I was able to come home and start getting ready for prom. 

Day Eight

Tammy opened up The Art of Cake almost three years ago, and has been working very hard ever since. It was originally a walk-in bakery, but when she realized she was making most of her profit from her big event cakes and the summer camp, she realized it wasn't worth keeping it a walk-in bakery. The past years she has taken so many orders and even been at the bakery up until two in the morning working on cakes and even planning for the hectic camp! She finally decided now is her time to take some time off. She has been in Florida with her siblings and to celebrate her birthday since Sunday and will be there until Wednesday. Since she is the owner, the bakery was closed today.