Today is Tuesday, which means cake class day for mom and I. This particular Tuesday is the day we will learn drop flowers, star flowers, and leaves. I'm excited, though last night baking the cupcakes I had a chance to practise a bit. Mom and I made amazing chocolate cupcakes from scratch. We plan on filling them (in class) with a peanut butter concoction, making Reeses (r) inspired treats. Then we will decorate with not-so-inspired flowers.
Anyway. After the cupcakes were finished cooling and we were beginning to put them away, I decided to ice the mini cupcakes we had baked with the extra dough. I pulled out the practise page for roses and decided to take a stab at it. Roses were one of my primary motivations for taking the class, after all. They look so elegant and impressive sitting on top of a cake, especially a wedding cake. I wanted my cakes to look professional like that. (By the way, it turns out we won't be learning roses until Classes 2 and 3, so I may as well practise now, right?) To start your rose, you first need tip 6 (I think, I can't remember right now. It is the larger round hole, about 1 1/2 centimeters in diameter) to make a blob in the center of a flower stick. I used my small cupcakes as the flower stem. Then you start at the center of the blob making circles with tip 2D. The rounds turn out to be petals and after several rounds of ribbon-like icing, you start to see the bigger picture. Even with my amateur hand, the roses still looked pretty darn good.
It was after this experience (and after looking through Martha Stewart's cupcake book) that I proposed to Mom a home business idea. Why not try making all different kinds of cupcakes, different flavors, fillings, and icings? Once we have our favorites (and have perfected our technique), we can post pictures and descriptions of the cupcakes up on Ebay and sell our bakery/catering services online for local delivery. That way if it is unsuccessful we haven't invested all that much and we can go on with our lives. But if it is successful, we earn some money, gain experience, and hopefully can open our own little bakery with confidence. We would do artisan breads, muffins, cupcakes, cakes, pastries, and maybe even add a cafe with warm beverages.
Opening a bakery has been something that I have wanted to do for a long time, and now my mom has started getting enthusiastic about it as well. Though, as usual, she's a bit hesitant because her humility has her convinced that she is never going to improve to professional status. I beg to differ.
The life lesson I take from these Royal Icing Roses is this: never let reality douse your creativity. Though I am outwardly confidant and excited about this idea, I have a nagging doubt that any of this will come to fruition. Too much will get in the way, and I might get a job yet. But none of that is going to stop me from learning all these techniques and attempting to achieve professional results in my cakes/cupcakes/desserts with the hope that one day I will be able to own my own bakery.
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