Because...SUMMER (Also--my ONE CAKE for this year)

Finally!  

My one big cake adventure for the year--more on that, below...

Wait.  It is the weekend right now, isn't it?  I just realized I honestly don't actually know what day it is.  *stares into space*  Saturday? Yeah, that seems right.  

See? Why would I be inside?  (Louis and Jack in the rose garden)

Moving on--

I probably won't post as much, so I'm just checking in to say that I'm fine. (I know you were putting your entire summer on holding wondering about that, so yes...rest easy, my dears).  I don't even get online much in the summer, because I'm outside, so, for all my fellow bloggers who I love to read--I'm not ignoring you, I'm saving the reading for later.  When the sun's not out.  Which is like 80% of the year, here.

Not that I won't still pop in to rant about one thing or another.  Like right now, I am driving my second rental car this summer, and I can just FEEL a "car review" post brewing soon.  If you're a Mazda 5 lover, you may need to look away for parts of that one.

If you know me, you know I pretty much live for summer.  My year revolves like this:  Holidays, that icky cold gap between the holidays and my birthday, waiting for summer, SUMMER, summer's almost over, I wish it was still summer, almost holidays, and back to-- holidays.  

The sun finally came back out this morning, the BBQ is out, the garden is peaking with the first giant wave of my zillions of antique roses, and I've spent the last three weeks enjoying having my brother and my mom here, watching our oldest graduate, knitting hats, studying French (for hours every day, for real...like where you actually speak it), and reading Utopia in the hammock.  Not even an e-book.  A real book.  With paper pages and everything.  

Also, I made the cake (at top) for our school's graduation, which was absolutely one of my funnest cakes ever!

A little closer view of my 3-D sugar tractor and palette 

All the details were made of sugar.  The whole thing is airbrushed metallic gold, which didn't translate well in the photo.  The kids each got a specific sugar item sculpted to match their interests, so I made a tractor (with wheels that turn, y'all), a palette for the grad going to fashion school, a film reel for the film school student, the British flag for the one going abroad, and a hand-painted sugar bagpipe for the girl who was leaving for Ireland and Scotland the day after graduation.  I can't tell you how fun this one was to make, and it was a privilege to do this for my daughter and her friends.  
Also--if you are interested in history/politics/society and you haven't read Utopia, you should check it out.  I'm a history freak, especially 16th century England and France, so I'm not sure why I haven't read this yet.  It's fascinating to me that this book was written in the early 1500s, but if you don't know that, you could easily forget that it's not sometimes talking about current trends in human nature and government.  Not at all what I expected.  (Note to self--I can also see where some of those hippie communes I remember from the 70s got their ideas.  It was just a book, people.)

So.  Here's to forgetting what day it is...for at least another 60 days, then we send one to college and one back to school, and the whole thing starts over again.

*muah*





 

A Cold and Blustery Pinterest-y Monday, I Guess, and Some Cakes I Have Loved

A cake I did for a magazine photo shoot, which published in March 2013

If you've read some of my older posts, you know I quit the wedding cake business about a year ago after 12 years of pretty much nothing BUT cake.  Since shutting down the business website, though, I never did get around to uploading some of my cakes to Pinterest.

Since Pinterest is one of only two places left online where any proof of my work "exists", and I get asked a lot to show pictures, I felt like this was a Very Important Thing I Should Do.  Because, you know, people might need to see this stuff. Or I just need validation. Or maybe I don't feel like doing any more laundry or dishes today, guys. Either way, I just totally blew off like 3 hours of time, in the interest of "sharing is caring", right?

So...if you're curious how I spent the last 12 years, or you're just really bored...go there and check it out.

Allow me to toot my own horn at this link to  --> MY CAKES ON PINTEREST

Yes, It's a CAKE.  I made a hollow sugar barrel and all the other details out of sugar too.  LOVED this one so much that I took about 50 pictures of the whole process of building this, from oven to finished board.

P.S.  I'm not on Pinterest often enough to even remember my password for the site, so if you leave comments there, I should warn you that unfortunately I also probably won't see them... (sorry, just sayin')

That OTHER Time I Was Almost Famous, When "Cupcake Wars" Called...

As most of you know, I spent about 12 years baking wedding cakes, dealing with awkward cake requests and even odder customers, built a bakery that almost took over my life, taught me to multitask like nobody's business, got to work with Gordon Ramsey/become almost famous, then closed it and came home to actually live my life...

But there was one phone call that I took, back in the summer of 2009 or 2010 (can't remember), that could have changed everything.  Who knows if it would have been good or bad?  

I remember it was hot out, and I was wrestling a 50-pound bag of cake flour out of my car in front of the bakery, when my business phone rang, with an out-of-state phone number.  Not one to miss a phone call, because--hello, that's just the kind of phone service I provide, OK?--I balanced the flour on my hip with my right arm, jammed my cell phone between my ear and my shoulder, threw my purse over my other shoulder, reached up to close the back hatch on my car with my free hand, and tried to sound like I wasn't standing in 95-degree heat holding 50 pounds of flour with one arm.

Me:  Hello, this is Stefanie, how can I help you? (almost shut the trunk, but not quite, so they can't hear the *click*)

Caller:  Hi, Stefanie! This is Cameron.  From FOOD NETWORK.  How are you today?

Me:  Hi, Cameron! I'm great, how are you?  (like he calls me all the time...)

Cameron from FOOD NETWORK:  Good, thanks.  Hey, I'm calling to see if you've heard of a new show we have on Food Network, called Cupcake Wars, and invite you to be a contestant!

YOU COULD BE FAMOUS! or fail horribly on cable TV...but either way--YAY! TV!

Me:  Oh.  Um...I love Food Network, but I don't actually *have* TV, so...

Cameron:  You don't have TV? (people always say this like you just told them you live in a van down by the river).

Me:  (my arm is starting to shake a bit, because I'm standing in the street holding 50 POUNDS OF FLOUR).  Yeah, but I've always enjoyed when I get a chance to watch cake challenge shows.  What's your show about?  

(He seems disappointed that a baker of my obvious stature in the cake world hasn't heard of his little program.  I feel just a little bit superior, but I try not to crush his enthusiasm, because I'm nice like that.)

Cameron:  Well, we call bakers, like yourself, from around the country, and you come and compete for a chance to win $10,000.  The winner has to fully design and construct a display, based on a theme, then bake and decorate a million cupcakes in 2 hours, for a big event that will be a surprise. The event will be something really important, like the Oscars or the Grammys or the Space Shuttle Landing or something.  

(Also, I think the quantity of cupcakes was actually 1,000.  But if you work alone, one thousand cupcakes might as well be one million, trust me).

I'm thinking, first of all--why ME?  I'm a WEDDING CAKE shop, not a cupcake shop.  And at that time, Lord knows, they were popping up everywhere.  You couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a new cupcake shop owner in a pastel apron.  "Best cupcakes in TOWN, I promise!"

Me:  Oh.  Wow.  You know that I'm not a cupcake shop, right?  It's just...me...by myself...and I do wedding cakes.  How'd you pick...me?

Cameron:  We found you online, and we LOVE your work.  If you win, or even if you just compete, you get to be ON TV, and you could win $10,000! Your bakery will have a chance to be a household name.  (I'm thinking...yeah...as in "Remember that baker who EPICALLY FAILED on that cupcake show?) If you're interested, you'd need to be free for 3-5 weeks to come stay in L.A., bring all your own tools, and pick an assistant to bring with you. We provide two helpers for you to build the final display that you'd need to design, and your assistant can help with everything else.  

He must have seen THIS on my website.  It was pretty cool.  But still...not my forte

I'm thinking, "Assistant?" bwahaha.  Oh Cameron.  Dear boy.  If I had an assistant, do you think I'd be working 16 hours a day and standing here in the sun holding 50 POUNDS OF FLOUR ON MY HIP?

Me:  Umm, well, it sounds pretty cool, but--aside from the fact that I don't have any assistant to bring, and I can't afford to leave my work and my family here and travel to L.A., and I don't actually make cupcakes...I also have a full wedding cake schedule through that month.  So...

Cameron:  Great!  You can email me for details.  Here's my address.  Do you have a pen?

Me:  Oh.  Well, actually, I'm standing here in the street, holding 50 POUNDS OF FLOUR right now.  Can you just email me a link?

Cameron:  Sure. I will email you the audition application right now.  Hope to hear from you soon.

And we hung up, with him somehow still convinced that I'd want to drop everything and jet off to L.A. with my non-existent assistant, to make one million 1,000 cupcakes, on cable TV. 

Another of my large cupcake deliveries.  I remember being so worried about how wobbly this stand was!

Long story short(er), I did go ahead and fill out the application and send it in, but I rebelliously refused to make an introduction audition video and send it, possibly because I was busy working on 5 weddings that weekend and had no time. I did look up the show and saw some of the other auditioning bakers, and sure enough, they were all big cupcake bakeries from big cities, where baking 1,000 cupcakes was what they do every day before breakfast.  I'd never made more than like 200-300 cupcakes at one time, and I thought THOSE were a challenge...

Like THIS?  See?  Two to three of these PER SEASON doesn't really qualify me.

THIS was more my thing.  I LOVED hand painting these beautiful feathers

Or THIS--ivory with appliques, which looked so pretty at this particular venue

Why didn't someone call me to do one of THOSE?  

I wasn't really interested in getting famous (or infamous) in the cupcake world at the time, so I wasn't sorry that I didn't pursue this offer.

Plus, I talked to some friends in the cake industry who'd done these challenges, and they said that, not only were the competitions so stressful that you absolutely want to kill yourself before you're done, they throw in drama (because what reality show is complete without it?), and expenses (like, you pay your own way and your ingredients are *not* free, or something), so that by the time it's over, if you didn't win (or throw yourself on a cake knife), sure--you were ON TV--but you're also BROKE AND STRESSED OUT BEYOND BELIEF.  One went so far as to say, "Seriously? If you win, that $10,000 prize will just cover what it cost you to be there."  

I also heard that, to make it interesting, they would randomly throw in a fun Secret Ingredients for the bakers to deal with.  I heard the words..."salmon" and "beef jerky" bantered around, in the same sentence as "cupcakes".

What the..HECK?  Beef jerky??  Are you even kidding me?!?  So, even if I'd had a) the money or b) the patience or c) an assistant, I'd have still totally been that baker who got on TV and had them say, "Today's secret ingredient is...beef jerky", and I'd have untied my apron and been like, "I'm out."  I'd have voted myself off the show.  

Plus, I'd have had no idea how to build a theme-related cupcake display to hold one million 1,000 cupcakes and reflect the Oscars or the Superbowl or whatever, and then try to tell two L.A. guys in flannel shirts how to built what I want.  I pictured them standing there, toolbelts ready, and me staring at a blank "sketch" paper, going, "Ummm..." while the clocking is ticking, tick tock ticktockticktockTICKTOCK YOU ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME ON CABLE TV, AND THE WHOLE WORLD WILL REMEMBER YOU FOR THIS.

One of my other friends was like, "Stef.  Maybe that's why they called you.  So you could be *that* one.  You know...the one who everyone remembers because they told the judges to bite off, or gets cut from the first episode because they forgot the baking soda in the cake batter and then punched their assistant in the face?"  

Ah...HAH.  

Oh, yeah, Cameron.  I'm on to you, baby. 

Obviously, I didn't hear from them again.  But, I didn't really expect to...

I know--it's been four years, but I finally Googled the show and saw some of the displays for the first time ever:  (source for photos below = Google Images.  Not sure it matters, but I'm sure someone would say it does)

Hmmm...

Ahhh...

What?  See?  There's no way I'd have been able to design THAT--

So, now you know...the rest of the story.  (And if you get that reference -- *high five*)

Ever have one of those Fork in the Road phone calls? Ever have a chance to epically fail on cable TV?

Spring Cleaning and Leftover Cake. How Do I Recycle THESE?

THIS is still sitting in our spare room, on top of the sewing cabinet and some really important puzzle pieces.   What the heck?

Spring cleaning is upon us.  Or, rather, the idea of spring cleaning, for me.  Which means that I read the current Martha Stewart Living and am inspired to take q-tips to my windowsills and pull out the refrigerator and see what's actually back there in the deepest cracks of doom where toast crumbs and milk lids go to languish.  I might even dust the chandeliers.  I know...pretty crazy.

Not that I will do those things, but I did sweep today, and I considered putting the screens back on our windows, but...they never got pulled off last fall, because we like to open our windows all winter due to the fact that we have a wood stove, which means it can easily be 80-82 degrees in the living room, but if you open the windows without the screens on them, the cats will totally get out and be eaten by coyotes.

Louis is super worried about coyotes...

So is Sam...Relax, little buddies.  I left the screens ON.

So, it's like I paid it forward by skipping that chore last fall.   Win.

I'm also totally procrastinating getting outSIDE right now, where I have more work in the garden than a whole team of men named Renato could accomplish, waiting for me.  It's not like one less day will matter...and I'll be happy with anything I accomplish out there this year, because at this point anything will be an improvement.  Our front yard effortlessly gives off the casual appearance of:    "Someone Might Live Here..."

Yes.  This USED to be a nice perennial bed.  With edging. 

What I MEANT to show you, though, was the cake dummies I keep running into when I clean or wander the house thinking about the things that I should be cleaning:  There are four leftover display cakes that we brought home from the cake bakery when we closed it.  They are my last finished displays from the shop.  Two were actually created after we closed the shop, because I got an A+ in Denial.

The grey one was custom-designed for a vignette I put together with some awesome wedding vendors at a bridal event.  The blue one went in a national cake magazine edition that was published the month after I closed the doors, which was surreal. The poppies were my first attempt at hand-painting a cake.  And, the white and gold one at the beginning of this post, which I created for a Valentine's photo shoot at a local venue...I can't BEAR to throw away those flowers that I made!!

The last three survivors, sitting in the middle of our living room upstairs on an air hockey table while I painted the whole room around them.  Now...where to PUT them???

I threw out the rest of the cakes on display when we closed the shop, and Lord help me, that was HARD, you guys.  You can't believe the cake art that went in the dumpster.  But these.  I can't seem to toss them.

Five of these went in the trash, including the one I made for Gordon Ramsey...

What do you think?  Bite my lip and put them in the dumpster?  Disassemble them and use them for dummies later--in case I ever get inspired to want to decorate again or need something to do?  Give them to a wedding planner to rent out?  Keep dusting AROUND them?

I know I should toss them, but *sigh*.  All that work...

See what I mean?  I can't throw these away.

Maybe I could pull them out and put them in a vase...

Or start an Etsy shop! Yeah... no.

I seriously did consider making these flowers for custom orders, but they take so long to make and are so delicate that I wouldn't want to ship them anywhere, and plus, then I'd be back, dealing with more vendor/customer service stuff, which I already have enough of.

I'm leaning toward putting the flowers in a vase and tossing the rest in the trash, but why is it so HARD?




Ever find yourself hanging onto stuff that has no place in your life (or your house), but is too awesome to throw away?

One Year Later--A Look Back Down the Rabbit Hole

Best not to look back.  Right?

Being an insomniac sometimes leads to having lots of possibly meaningful things clattering around in your head at 1:00 a.m.  Sometimes I find that if a particular train of thought won't come to rest, then I should probably write it down, or suffer watching the sun come up, while getting no sleep at all.  Last night was one of those nights.

The last few nights the thought that comes to mind as soon as my head hits the pillow, is that next week is an anniversary of sorts.  It's been about a year since I basically turned in the keys to my beloved BMW X5 and the wedding and custom cake bakery that we built, after I had worked in the wedding industry in this area for years, and having finally decided to Take It To The Next Level.  It started out as a concrete and stud-wall blank slate of an empty space, and I used my own (as well as my husband's) blood, sweat, tears, and hard-earned savings to dream up, design, and sketch floorplans, interior walls, dimensions, and light fixtures.  Next we primed, masked, and painted, then oversaw the finish work. 

I personally ordered and then installed, or oversaw installation, of every appliance, counter, trim piece, cabinet, table, work space, and sink.  I personally picked out the paint colors, and we painted the ceilings and walls ourselves.  I personally chose the furniture and décor, and arranged it where I wanted.  I personally chose the finish for the stained concrete floor and the color of the miniblinds. I personally covered the kitchen space with a coat of industrial garage floor textural paint.  That space absolutely reflected me, and I basically lived there for 4 solid years, sometimes 16 hours a day, many nights until 1 a.m.

I also custom ordered the X5 at the same time--colors, package options, everything, right from Germany, for my 39th birthday, so yeah…I miss that too.  Probably won't ever do that again, either.

(I thought about posting pictures of the shop and the car here, but I think it's too depressing for this post.  You can find them in some of the other 'cake decorating' posts like here and here, if you're curious. They were lovely.)

But--the bakery and my wedding and event cake schedule took over my life.  It was the hardest decision I've ever had to make, to lock the door and walk away from it.  I am surprised that the exact date that I peeled my signage off the interior door, locked it behind me, and drove away for the last time…escapes me.  Odd.  One usually remembers important milestone dates; but maybe those hard days--you just want them behind you…So, no, I don't remember the exact date that we emptied everything out of the space that had been my literal second home and a huge part of my identity for such a long time, and went home.

It's been an interesting year, since then.  Yes, it was hard.  I've had times where I cried until I thought I might actually throw up.  Conversely, I have never so intensely enjoyed every hour of so much personal time:  time to relax, time to spend with my family, time to sit on the back deck with a book on a Friday in July, with no wedding cakes to work on.  This year I also got back in touch with my garden and our land, which I had missed so much, and with all the other things I enjoy doing, which had been on absolute pause while I did nothing but meet with brides and work on wedding cakes.  My life consisted of sketching cakes, designing cakes, baking cakes, decorating cakes, delivering cakes.  You get the idea.  Lots of cake. And nothing else.

Last night, I was lying in bed at 12:40 a.m., waiting to sleep, and enjoying the view of our property through my bedroom window, by winter moonlight.  A dense fog was creeping in across the heavily snow-blanketed fields that surround our house, shrouding the garden in repose, where last year's Brussels sprouts stems still lean at odd angles after the deer finished them off.  I watched it drift in around the frozen pond and the blue spruce trees that we planted so many years ago, all now weighed down under heavy new snow--a quiet otherworldly scene in black and white.  It felt like a silent safety net around this little patch of the earth that has been a solace and a refuge to our family for so long, and looking out at it from under a heap of cozy layers of sheets, blankets, comforters, and quilts in shades of my favorite red, I felt blessed to be free of the stress of that other life, and to feel so…present…here, now.  I also wished again that I could sleep, but this schedule is nothing new to me.

The view from my pillow...imagine it by moonlight.  And with less cat.

Still.  Being happy where I am now doesn't stop me from glancing back now and then.  I'm pretty sure I won't turn into a pillar of salt for looking over my shoulder, and it wouldn't be honest to say that I don't miss it sometimes.  Very occasionally (really rarely--maybe it's still too soon to look too often), I will come across pictures of the shop, or the cake display on the wall that Shane built for me, or the car that carried so many cakes to so many weddings, and there is a sudden swell of grief that almost takes my breath away, and I feel tears instantly ready to fall (Damn you, tear ducts! Stop it! I don't cry!)  Then I remind myself what I've gained, for what I gave up, and I am also heart-wrenchingly glad to have been here for my family (and myself) this last year.  I was so grateful for the freedom to work outside in our gardens last summer, to feel dirt on my hands and the sun on my shoulders, to be tired after a day in the garden (sore, but in a good way), and to enjoy working around the plants in the garden and see them produce the fruits and vegetables that we are enjoying with every meal now, in the deepest winter.

Of course I miss the shop.  When you build something like that from the ground up and design every inch of it, it has its own heartbeat.  It becomes part of you and part of who you are.  I have no desire to start over, or do a "few cakes now and then".  None.  I guess maybe, sure, I could have tried harder to find a way to make it work and keep going, but it was sucking the life out of me, and I was starting to hate it, even though I loved the creative outlet, income, and, I suppose, the status that it afforded. 

I miss the wedding industry.  I miss the ever-changing wedding trends to keep up with, and new techniques to master.  I miss my artist-self's ability to find inspiration for cakes everywhere, and the creative challenge of turning out a perfect and artistic wedding or event cake for someone's special day.  I miss the huge sense of accomplishment and pride in a job well done, when the cake is delivered, and it's exactly what the bride dreamed of.  

I miss seeing my work in photo spreads in local and national magazines and on wedding blogs.  I miss the reputation of being one of the area's top wedding vendors. I was on the verge of sort of a wider national name for myself when I quit, so there's that to wonder about--what if? At the date of my last and biggest photo layout in a national cake magazine, featuring a bio about me (and a PICTURE of me, omg)...the shop was actually already closed, which was surreal, at best.  That particular cake is still gathering dust upstairs; I can't bring myself to throw it in the trash, where the others all went.  

I loved all the vendors and our collaborative efforts and camaraderie on bridal shows and photo shoots.  I miss that sense of community and dedication to our industry.

I miss my vendor friends, who, as it turns out, have disappeared altogether, so maybe I should say they were acquaintances, or "business contacts", but I guess they weren't actually friends.  When you step out of an industry, it definitely goes on without you, as I knew it would. I wasn't quite expecting the actual people to disappear, too--but, no...it's not truly a surprise.  Well, OK, yeah, it is kind of a surprise, but--eh *shrug*--I guess we wouldn't have anything to talk about now any more, anyway.  Maybe it doesn't help to talk to someone who's left your industry and is glad to be out of it.  No one wants to hear that. 

Me:  "Yeah…my life is so much more fulfilling now that I'm not in your line of work anymore." 

Them:  "(nothing)"

 Maybe it's hard to imagine that someone can purposely leave an industry when they are at the top of their game, and have that be OK.  It would have been nice, though, to have any of them, even just once, reach out with a phone call or an email (or heck, a text) to say, "Hey.  Miss you. How's it going?"  Not surprising, but…yeah, disappointing.  I guess we all want to be liked for ourselves, too, not just because we're "useful industry connections". 

It's all good, though.  My real friends are still here, who loved me before I was a cake decorator, while I was a cake decorator, and after I quit, and I love them right back. 

What I don't miss is the hours and the lack of sleep and the lack of just TIME to be with my family.  Time to do all the other things I have always loved…traveling and gardening and reading, knitting, crocheting, cross-stitching, painting, sewing, baking (for us), canning, entertaining, swimming and working out, and yes, even simple things like keeping my own house clean.  Now, I have time to do all those things, plus I can be on hand for my kids' school events, help with their projects, and I even can attend every single volleyball and basketball game now, without it being a juggling act and a guilt trip because, OMG, I should be working on a CAKE.

(I know…rambling…but I wrote this at 1:30 a.m., so give me a break, ok? I'm thinking out loud…)

I wanted to leave on a positive note, and what originally got me out of bed and started on writing this post was actually the memory of my last cake, last year.  It was a wall-hanger, and it was sort of my creative swan song.  It also epitomized everything I loved, and everything I hated about cakes.  Here's the story.  I'd try to be brief, but you already know that isn't going to happen.  Thanks for listening, though.

It was for a lovely lady, a friend of a dear old friend, whose mother was turning 85.  She was an adorable Polish woman named Ivanka, whose Polish accent reminded me so much of my grandmother that I wanted her to come home and read me a bedtime story, every night, forever. (She declined.) She had always been an artist, so they wanted her cake to somehow incorporate that aspect of her life…and could I somehow use her paintings as inspiration?  So I designed a square cake and did my best to recreate her paintings, one on each side of the cake.  They were impressionistic and very modern-art-ish and colorful, and it was a cake painter's dream. 

The tricky part was that:  1) It was due on our anniversary.  2)  The date also happened to be the day of our school's biggest fundraiser of the year, for our oldest child's senior trip, which I was helping organize, and 3)  That fundraiser was slated to begin at with everyone meeting on site at 7:00 a.m.  I knew I would have to break away from the fundraiser to go deliver this cake around 1 p.m. that day, so it had to be done the night before.

I baked and covered the tiers with fondant in the two days before the event, then stacked the tiers the night before.  I didn't even start to paint this cake until 11:30 p.m. that night (No--I don't know why, but it's not unusual, when you're working on cakes).  It took me until 4:55 a.m. to finish painting it.  My alarm clock was scheduled to go off at 5:45 a.m., so I finished painting it and laid on the couch for 30 minutes; then I heard everyone's alarm clocks start going off, and we all got up and left for the fundraiser.   I had catnapped for 30 minutes before starting our anniversary day…

Here are the pictures of her artwork, side-by-side with the cake sides that each painting was converted into, after 5 hours of painting...

Her painting, above left, and the design I painted on the cake, at right and below:

Below--another side, painting at left, cake at right:

Tentacle painting at left, cake at right, below:

Last side, painting at left, cake at right:

If you're a cake decorator, you can just imagine how fun this was!

I loved it, even though at about 3 a.m. while painting, I was getting sort of delirious, and I was all… "I can feel what she was thinking when she painted this.  I know her."  No idea what that meant, but at 3 a.m., it seemed pretty profound, you know?

Anyhoo.

I survived the day and the fundraiser, and delivered the cake to the party for the family, and it was so worth it, to see the look on the daughter's face when she saw it, and then I got to be there when they led her mother in for the surprise of it, covered with my rendition of four of her paintings, one of each side of the cake.  I got a hug (and a lot of money).  She was the star of the day, and it was the perfect cake for her.  And it was the perfect ending for me, too.  One last blast of creative and bittersweet energy went into a cake that kept me awake all night, left me staggeringly tired for the whole day, dragging myself through a day filled with 30 teenagers and a fundraising effort that raised $3,400.00 in 6 hours, but also deeply gratified to the depth of my artist's soul (and my artist's vanity), while simultaneously robbing my husband and me of the usual way we celebrate our anniversary--together, alone, and not exhausted…

This year, I promise--we are spending it differently.  And there will not be cake involved, unless someone else bakes it and delivers it up with room service.

The moral?  I don't know.  I guess it would be that even though, yes, I sometimes miss the one thing I gave up…then I think of all the many things I've been blessed to have back, and I remember that, no, I'm not sorry after all. 

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has ever found themselves looking back on a chapter of their life and finding that it was very much like a trip down the rabbit hole:  full of odd experiences, some new friends, some scary people, and then suddenly--whoosh--you're back up for air and back to your real life again, and wondering, "Did that really all just happen?"

What...in the heck...was THAT all about?

That Time I Worked with Gordon Ramsey and was Almost Famous

A Truly Long Story, (but a long true story, too).

Back when I was at what I will call the zenith of my cake decorator fame, a lovely business acquaintance contacted me to see if I'd be interested in working on a reality TV show with "a very famous celebrity".  She couldn't give details, other than it was someone very famous, with a very famous TV show, and it would involve a wedding.  They were looking for our area's best for wedding vendors, and she wanted me on the team (of course).

 After staring into space for a whole 10 seconds, wisely considering the pros and cons and out-of-pocket expense against any possible benefit, and mentally erasing everything from my calendar for the future, I very calmly said, "OMG YES!! COUNT ME IN!  I AM SO IN!"

I had visions of myself shooting to wedding cake super stardom, working with David Tutera to make My Fair Wedding brides' dreams come true, with my beautiful and stylish bakery being known far and wide because I took this step into worldwide recognition. I couldn't imagine who else could be filming a wedding reality show in our town.  It had to be David, right?  Here was my chance to Get My Name Out There, for real. 

Screeeeeeeeeeech. 

That is the sound Fantasy makes when it crashes into Reality.

Without any idea who I was signing up to work with or what might be required, I signed on and waited on pins and needles for details of my new adventure.  Then she called me and told me Who the celebrity was.  It was NOT David Tutera. 

She was like, "Stef, it's Gordon Ramsey."

Wait--what?

Did you say...Gordon Ramsey?  That guy who is one of TV's most famous chefs.  One of the world's harshest food critics.  Gordon who is also best known for cussing out cooks on his shows.  Do you mean THAT Gordon Ramsey?? I never even watched any of his shows, back when we had TV, because just the trailers for his shows were scary and full of him shouting obscenities at quavering kitchen staff.  Shows with names like Hotel Hell, Kitchen Nightmares, Hell's Kitchen, Welcome to Hell in the Kitchen.  I think that last one is made up...

I had an instant panic attack.  Because, hello--I'm a baker.  If it's a reality show about a wedding, and I'm making the wedding cake, is this a set up?  Am I the one who gets chewed out on live TV?  Ohhh dear, what have I signed up for?

She was like, "No really. It'll be fine.  Our job is to come in at the end of the reality show and magically make everything come together with a perfect wedding.". Well, that's a relief.  No pressure. I just need to make a perfect wedding cake for TV's harshest food critic currently alive on the planet.

I was starting to sweat a bit, but I decided that I didn't care WHAT his name was, if they were thinking of pulling any reality TV make-the-baker-cry crap with me, they had another thing coming.  He's just a guy, and I don't take that kind of nonsense from anyone...I don't care HOW famous they are. 

I was told that at any time over the next 2-week period, TV producers *could* show up unannounced and possibly want to film.  At my shop.  I freaked out and started cleaning like a maniac and dressing up to go to work.  Full makeup.  Clean apron every hour.  I made the building managers refresh the front of the building my shop was in...clean walkways, fresh mulch, etc.  I held my breath and tried to carry on like nothing was out of the ordinary, except for constantly wiping every surface spotless while trying to produce wedding cakes. 

Nerve-wracking!

Of course, they didn't decide to knock on my door.  Which was kind of a let-down, after all the cleaning, wiping, mirror-checking, and flossing I constantly did for 2 weeks...

So.  The idea was that basically I needed to design a wedding cake for a bride and groom using the theme of the wedding ("bling"), some of the bride's input, but basically...my favorite thing...full creative license.  So, that was no problem.  I sketched pages and and pages of cake designs until I settled on the exact cake that I would want to create, which would combine all these things, look great under bright lights, AND be a stunning example of my work in this, my one shot at having one of my cakes shown on worldwide  TV.  I loved the design I came up with, and since only the bottom tier of it needed to be edible cake for them to cut on the episode, the rest could be Styrofoam dummies.  My favorite kind of cake to decorate--easy to work with, easy to transport, and creative license.  Yeah, baby. No problem.

That part accomplished, I was thinking...this will be fine.  Except for the part that I'm making cake for freaking Gordon Ramsey!  He's going to EAT my cake!!!  aieeeeeeeee      Ok, calm DOWN!!

Then the producers sent a small monkey wrench on over.

My coordinator friend emailed, saying that they would actually need not one, but TWO different cakes for this episode.  One would be for the actual wedding (and yes, the couple really did get married, and they were truly the sweetest kids, and thrilled to be getting a dream wedding).  The other cake would be for a quick "reveal" shot that would be filmed earlier in the episode, but it needed to be something else.  Not the actual final cake.  I was like, "...something else like what?" 

She sent me this:

"They want to know if you can make this."

Ummmm, WHAT?

They wanted a croquembouche tower like the one at the left (light blue base), above.  I studied these in horrified awe.  I know what croquembouche are, but I'd never seen one placed on top of a cake.  What the actual heck?  Even if done well...those are not, uh, pretty.  And no on in Idaho is going to order one...ever.

Without blinking an eye, I immediately answered breezily that yes, I could totally make that, and how big did they want it?  Like I do these all the time.  (I'd never even made cream puffs, let alone a tower of them held together on top of a cake, wrapped in perfect strands of spun sugar!).  Yep--no problem-o.  Inside...more sweating and hyperventilating.

Omg.  omg, omg Omg OMG OMG OMG OMGOMG.

Crap.  What have I got myself into??

I'd already said yes, and there was no way I was going to do this and fail, on TV, in front of Gordon Ramsey, so I took a deep breath and started researching croquembouche online.  I trawled Food Network's website, Master Chef's website, recipe.com, CakeCentral.com, and blogs devoted to nothing but croquembouche.  I visited websites in Europe that specialize in this European dessert. 

The instructions I read were not encouraging, to put it mildly. 

1.  First and foremost--Do NOT attempt to make croquembouche when it's humid.  The caramel will soften and not hold the tower together, and it will collapse.   (Check.  Collapses if raining.)

2.  Do NOT store croquembouche at room temp.  The cream filling is perishable and MUST be refrigerated.  (Check.  Keeping it on the counter will kill people, possibly Gordon Ramsey).

3.  Do NOT refrigerate croquembouche after assembled, as the humidity in the fridge will ruin the caramel spun sugar, and it will collapse.  (Check, keeping it in the fridge will ruin it.  Wait--what?)

4.  Croquembouche should be assembled on site, as close to serving time as possible.  (Check. So,  I need to build this thing, for the first time, in front of Gordon-freaking-Ramsey.  Possibly on live TV.  What could possibly be stressful about THIS?)

I sent a quick email over to the coordinator, asking her, were they SURE that they want croquembouche, and if so...were they planning to serve it? Or could it be a mock-up made of basically empty cream puffs held together with Gorilla Glue?  That, I could handle.  She wrote back and said that yes, the producers wanted it to be real, filled with pastry cream, and that yes, they would be eating it.  I read that as "Gordon Ramsey will be personally eating these cream puffs, so they better be the best cream puffs ever made anywhere on the planet."     Yay, more STRESS.

I wrote back, "No problem" and sat down and tried not to have a stroke.  It was February in northern Idaho, and it was raining almost nonstop.  Hello--humidity 100%!?

I calmly gathered my facts:

1.  I have to learn to make perfect French cream puffs and vanilla pastry cream filling, assemble them, wrap them in spun sugar, transport this tower to the film location, IN THE RAIN, and have it hold together.  For Gordon Ramsey. 

2.  I can NOT assemble this in front of Gordon Ramsey and a camera crew or I will pass out.

3.  I can NOT make it ahead and keep it in the fridge.

4.  OMG I'm making cream puffs for Gordon Ramseeeeeheeheeheeeheee---wheeeeeze

Then:  Oh no.  Maybe this is the point of the show!  Maybe it's about watching a baker try to do the impossible and then have Gordon cuss me out when it collapses, which it MUST.  On TV. 

One of my strengths is that I work well under pressure, so I set about learning how to make perfect cream puffs.  I made batch after batch of them, every day, for about a week.  I made fresh vanilla bean pastry cream filling for every one of them and filled them.  I made sure they were perfectly filled, perfectly formed, and perfectly delicious.  My family was heartily sick of cream puffs.  I was giving them away at our school, giving them to anyone who would take them.  I even donated some to our school auction.

Then, I focused on learning to assemble a croquembouche, which is a tower of about 75-100 cream puffs, stacked and held together with 240-degree caramel syrup, with no support from inside the tower, and then wrapped in a wispy veil of delicate, infinitesimally small, breakable strands of spun sugar.  I would have to drive this thing, assembled, for about 10 minutes in the rain from my shop to the film location, so I made a small practice tower of unfilled puffs.  Here it is, the practice croque:

I carried this around in a box in my car for about 5 days.  I hit bumps.  I hit railroad tracks.  I took corners too fast.  It snowed.  It rained.  I checked the box, and that thing was FINE.  I'm golden.

With a HUGE sigh of relief, I had convinced myself that, yes, this can be transported in the rain, and it will not collapse.  In front of Gordon Ramsey.

Next I baked and decorated the bottom support cake that would hold my croquembouche.  This also had to be "real", because (so I heard), they would also be eating this one too.  (Yay, more stress!)

The finished base cake, 10" of purple velvet deliciousness

My next task was to figure out how to assemble a whole perfect croquembouche, as close to the 7 a.m. delivery time on the filming date as possible, but NOT have to put it in the fridge.  My only option was to make about 150 cream puffs and all the pastry cream filling the night before, and then get up really really early and go to the shop and assemble a perfect croquembouche for Gordon Ramsey, complete with spun sugar, box it up, and be ready to leave with it at 7 a.m.  I allowed all the time I would need to fill each puff, boil the caramel to the right temperature, burn myself several times, assemble the tower, and wrap it in spun sugar.  I realized I needed to get up at about 2:15 a.m. to make it work.  So I set my alarm, ironed my chef's coats--and made it work. 

The final tower

 Unfortunately, I can't show you a picture of the final tower assembled on the cake above, on set.  Due to the highly secretive nature of reality TV security and all, we had the super-strictest orders that if we so much as showed up on set with a phone anywhere on our body, even for emergencies, even if it's in your pocket and it's turned off, they would throw us off the set and possibly close down the production and move out of town and sue us for eleventy million dollars.  Got it.  No phones. 

So I would have to wait til months afterwards, after the show aired, to see my creation.  But even on the disc of a zillion photos that I did score from the Fox TV producers, not one of the photos included the finished croquembouche.  So we'll have to just imagine it, I guess, based on this lovely sketch I sent them when we were negotiating the fact that there would even BE a croque:



 Imagine this.  Only real, and with Gordon Ramsey nearby and/or eating it.

  

Meanwhile, I had also simultaneously baked a 12" bottom round cake for what became the 4-tiered wedding cake for the real wedding part of the episode.  It was nearly finished when I left that morning with the croquembouche, and I raced back between takes to finish touching it up with lots of iridescent powder, so it would sparkle under the cameras.  I loved how it turned out.

  

 Some close-ups of the bling-y details, courtesy of Fox TV photographers:

 The final cake that was on TV in September 2012

On the day of filming, I arrived with the croquembouche for the 7:30 setup of the "reveal" shot for the episode.  Basically the vendors involved had to come in and set up the entire reception for a quick sneak peak on film.  Then we had to come back in at like 11 a.m. and remove all of it, down to the last flower petal, and set up a complete wedding ceremony in the same room.  Inside of a 45-minute time window.  THEN, we had to come back in at like 3:30 and flip the whole thing back into (tah-dah) the reception again.  The whole time, we were literally tripping on camera crews and photographers, so we're all dressed in our logo-showing best, fully prepared to see ourselves on TV someday.  

Oh my gosh, this is my Big Break, riiiight?  Not exactly.  Because, hello--editing.  They got like 9 hours of footage for a 1-hour show, so naturally, we didn't end up with any actual camera time.  Surprise.

When I came in after the "reveal" shot had been filmed, to remove whatever might be left of the cream puff tower and the cake under it, I found...the whole entire thing, still sitting there.  Untouched.  Gordon Ramsey had not, in fact, eaten my cream puffs.  In fact, no one had.  The cake wasn't touched, either, so now I was standing there holding 50 servings of purple velvet cake and about 80 cream puffs in the rain, wondering what the heck am I supposed to do with this? and simultaneously...Whaaattt? Are you kidding me right now?  Do you have any idea what I went through to make this?!?

But since questions silently asked receive only silence for answers, I made an executive decision.  I boxed the perfect, untouched base cake back up and handed it to the couple who were on site as the DJ team for the reception, who had 5 kids, who I knew would appreciate a delicious sugar rush.  Then I walked into the set crew's tent, where they were all shivering around a space heater in the solid drizzling 37-degree weather, and set the perfect croquembouche on the folding table in front of them.

"Here. This is for you."

They were afraid to touch it.  "What? It's too pretty.  I couldn't.  I don't want to ruin it."  So I sort of violently ripped off the top cream puff and bit an angry bite out of it, then tore off another one and handed it to him.  "EAT IT."  Intimidated by my chef's coat, no doubt, and the fact that he might be talking to the next Big Thing in cake decorators, and you need to "keep the talent happy", the guy took a bite.  They were heavenly, by the way.  Gordon...you missed out, baby.  By the end of the night, most of it was gone.  I can only hope that maybe he stopped in and actually ate one, since I spent weeks agonizing over making them for him.

The whole rest of that day was a blur of standing in the cold, in the rain, and in the dark.  At one point, I did actually see The Man himself...from across a parking lot, getting out of his trailer.  But I was too far away to casually yell "Hi, Gordon!" so I just stood there and hoped that my glaring white chef's coat might give me away as the creative genius behind the reception centerpiece, etc etc.  He must have been super busy, because he did not pop over to shake my hand or take any selfies.  I had vainly imagined having a framed photo of me and Gordon on the wall of my bakery--you know--arm around my shoulder, grinning and making a "thumbs up" sign at the camera, me in my chef's coat, looking professional and glad not to get cussed at...

Yeah...no.  That so did not happen.  No glossy 8 x 10 for you.

What did happen is we all showed up at 11 p.m. to clean up the reception room after the filming was over.  I dressed up again in a sparkling white chef's coat with my logo on it, full hair and makeup.  Just in case, you know, maybe he's going to POP IN after we all spent 2 weeks of our lives, countless dollars of our own money, put our families completely on hold, went without our phones for a whole day, and maybe, just maybe he will come in and give us a thumbs up, like, "Hey, you guys are awesome! Thanks for a great job."  We waited in vain, and I found out later that he'd been on a plane out of Spokane at like 8 p.m.

Can you say...anticlimax?  Well, at least I didn't fail and get cursed at on TV.

Looking back, I can't say it was truly fun, because at the time it was all so stressful (and costly, and completely uncompensated, except for a CD full of photos, none of which included ANYone famous.  Thanks, FoxTV).  Our episode airing date was rescheduled from April to May to September, but it was a blast to watch, and I got to see my cake right there on actual TV, for a whole 30 seconds.  

Basically none of the lovely, talented, hard-working wedding vendors who gave 110% for that production were given any mention or footage (even in the credits, though we were listed on the website). 

As for my long-awaited croquembouche scene--the camera panned the room once, and the croque was hidden behind a floral arrangement and wasn't visible, so honestly that whole cream puff adventure HADN'T MATTERED AT ALL.  I could have saved myself going through all that stress. 

I can honestly say that I had to agree with my husband afterwards.  Signing up for a reality show featuring one of my cakes, which could be my Big Break...was about the most costly, time-consuming, stressful, and least effective method advertising that I ever did in 12 years.  He's always right.  But I will always remember that day in the rain with that great group of dedicated wedding vendors.  We all deserve a huge shout out for the effort we put into making that day come off perfectly. 

Oh wait...we DID get permission to use this on our websites: 

Well.  It's something, right?

There is one great thing I learned (aside from the fact that I will never be famous).  I know how to make truly fantastic cream puffs.

P.S.  To Gordon's credit, all the vendors who did get to interact with him, said he was delightful to work with, super professional and polite, and very sweet, off camera.  

Has anyone else ever been surprised by something that was soooo not your Big Break?  Ever spend agonizing amounts of uncompensated time on something that turned out to be *not* worth it?