Favorite Projects/ Orders

Through my experience at the Cake Mama's, I have seen so many interesting creations made, an. I even got to experience being a part of the decorating process of the cakes. I decided to share some of these cakes on the blog so I can show what I have been a part of and what designs can come in: 

My Last day..

        On May 20th, my last day at the Cake Mama's had appeared. I had mixed feelings about this day because I knew I wanted to stay, but at the same time, I wanted to leave because of school! I did not know what to do, so I decided to finish my last day of cutting edibles and making fondant discs. As the time flew by, I stayed focused on the task at hand so that I may end my time there on a good note.
                                                                                                 Before Janelle Copeland
, the owner, had left, she told me that she would be willing to bake, fill, and cover all six cakes I needed for my presentation, which was amazing to hear! I was excited because decorating cakes was my original plan for my presentation, and to here here say that she will donate the cakes made me feel like I could actually do the two hour presentation with an amazing activity, so I want to thank the Cake Mama's for every they have done for me and for accepting me as an intern. After experiencing what it is like to work in a business, I feel ready to learn more about every aspect of business management I can.

Blog #26: Senior Project Reflection

1]  The thing I am most proud of during my senior presentations is my big activity. My activity was to decorate a cake based on a certain theme that they were given at the beginning of the presentation. After my presentation, everyone was telling me how they loved my activity, and it made me feel like I had an awesome opportunity and senior project that everyone really enjoyed.

2] a. On my presentation, I would give myself an AE

    b. On my overall senior project, I would give myself a P

3] What worked for me the best about the senior project would definitely be the mentorship because I learned a lot more that I would have originally through research and it was a new experience that I never thought I would get the chance to do. Also, I felt that through the mentorship I got experience to experience what kind of skill I need to improve on and what I need to learn in order to actually be ready to own my own business.

4] If had the opportunity to change something in my senior project, it would have to be the amount of research I had, and also to extend my research to more aspects of not just the cake decorating side, but the business aspect as well.

5] The first thing the senior project has helped me in is how much more detailed and extensive in my research I should be. When I was beginning in my research, I never really new what I was looking for, or how to look at every word so I knew what I could research next in the topic. Another thing I learned was how a business is actually run. I never really understood how pricing works or how booking keeping is done, so actually getting to experience and do it myself helped me learn a lot more about the business side of a bakery or retail store, or how everything functions in a business.

The Class's Creations

Prep and Outcome

Today was a very fruitful yet crazy day. The day before my senior project, I had the pleasure of revisiting my mentorship to pick up a very important part of my presentation, the six cake I needed for my activity. It was exciting to see them made already, and I was so thankful they gave them to me because I believe this is what made my presentation better than I had expected! The following day was finally the day of my two-hour presentation. I had arrived at school at seven am, with all of my supplies; fondant, cakes, table clothes, and my powerpoint.

I had begun to set up, and it was a mad rush to get everything ready, like the table positioning, the chocolate melted, and the cakes out of Mrs. Pittman's fridge, and as soon as the presentation had started, I was nervous to the breaking point! It was until I had started my activity that I saw everyone was truly having a good time at my presentation. As soon as they got to work on their designs and cakes, I was creative sparks flying. All of them had such great ideas, and I was happy to see creativity in a classroom of people who really found interest in my presentation. This whole experience has been such a rewarding experience and I am really happy that everyone, including myself, had an amazing and fun time!

2 Hour Lesson Plan

2 hour lesson plan

Rice Krispes; Painful, yet artistic...

Today was an interestingly painful day at the Cake Mama's. When I first arrived, I was greeted by the aroma of freshly baked cake and the hellos of my fellow workers. As soon, as I asked for my first duty from my mentor, Ashley McNeal, she told me that I had a list of fondant numbers that had to be done. Thankfully, I had some of the number already cut out, ready to be glittered, as the orders had said. After constantly cutting a variety of numbers, wring them so they could stand, and glittering them different colors to match the theme, I was giving the task of sculpting towers of rice krispes.

 This sounded like an easy task at first. I went to the kitchen to grab the appropriate sized cake tins to create the correct shape and size of rice krispy towers. The first tower was going to be transformed into a pineapple for a spongebob cake, which to me sounded a bit strange because it did not resemble a pineapple at first, but Ashley had reassured me that it would be transformed into the desired shape. The next two towers became quite difficult to mold. As I took out more rice krispies to make the last two towers, I found out that I would be using a lot more treats than expected. One after the other, I used treats to form these towers, and soon, I realized that my hand started to tingle and have a feel of scratches on the skin, and as time passed, I realized that it took me about 5 trays to treats to create 3 towers.

Blog #28: Mentorship

L:

1. Mentorship Log link:
Mentorship Log

2. Contact name: Ashley McNeal

Phone #: +1 (909) 354-1112

I:

The most important thing that I took from working with my mentor was learning how the cake decorating business works, like how to price the design of a cake and how to talk to customers when discussing their cake order and design. This became so significant to my senior project because being able to understand how the pricing and how to properly treat customers and making connections with them became part of my foundation and also my third answer. I would not have been able to find both is these without the help of my mentor.

  

A:

Throughout my mentorship, I learned about new aspects to cake decorating that I never really realized before. For example, when I started talking to customers, I food out that this is a huge part to cake decorating because they give us the inspiration to the cake designs, an after seeing this and experiencing it for myself, this became my new third answer to me EQ. Also, I gained more information for my foundation, like how pricing works and what happened before actually decorating a cake (the baking of the cake).

Blog #24: Exit Interview Questions

1. The essential question to my Senior Project is "What is the best way to create a decorative art themed wedding cake?" and the best answer to that question is Prioritizing Customer Relations.

2. The process of getting to this answer as my best answer was a lot of trial and error. When I first started finding possible answers, I ignored this as a  key factor, but when I actually got to talk to customers at Cake Mama's, I realized that talking to the customer and designing the cake with them is what is the foundation behind the other two answers.

3. The main problem I had was getting a reliable mentorship. The reason for this is because when I first started working with my first mentor, she told me that she would call me in for every order she got, but I never got any messages from her. Since that failed, I began to search for a new mentor, put myself out there, but because I was underage at the time, no one would take me as an apprentice until Cherokee told me about the Cake Mama's and how they did mentorships, so the way I solved this problem was by asking around me about who they knew.

4. The two most important sources I have were my Third interview with Ashley McNeal, the head cake decorator at The Cake Mama's because she gave a new insight on the world of cake decorating, like making a connection with the customer and how they are the key aspect to the decorating process. The second important source that I have is my 10th Article "Interview #4: Ron-Ben Israel" because it showed me that you don't need to be classically trained to be an amazing cake decorator. He has always been an inspiration to me as an aspiring cake decorator and the article just showed me that not only do you need to have the inspiration to be a cake decorator and some of the key aspects to designing a cake, showed me that you need to find your muse and own style of decorating to be a success.

5. The product for me is definitely deciding what I want to major in when I go off to college, which is Business Management. The fact that I feel more confident with Pastry art does not mean that I know how to work the business itself. This project has helped me realize that I have to learn more about owning a successful business in order to follow my dream of being a pastry artist.

Hectic Day at The Cake Mama's!

       Today was probably one of the most amazing, but stressful, days of my mentorship (Second to Valentine's day, that was just ridiculous). While my mentor, Janelle, and Sabrina went to finish a cake for the Game of Thrones photoshoot, I was left doing the other orders that I knew I could do on my own.





 When I first entered, my mentor literally told me that she was going to "Pinch" me. Apparently, I took an order that was not supposed to be taken, but we got it done just in time! After, that my mentor had me do a bunch or other orders that needed to be finished. This took up my entire day and my feet have never hurt so much.

   After doing all of the orders for the day, I had decided to go to the back of the bakery to see how my co-worker, Gaby, was doing. She had told me that she frosted and filled about 24 cakes since 12 pm, and I thought she was about to go into a corner a cry because that is a lot cakes. I decided to help her out by frosting the last 3 cakes and wash the dishes for her.

Blog #23: Junior Interview

1. The Junior I interviewed was Vanessa Pancheco and she is in West House.

2. While talking to her, she had said that the ideas she had for her Senior Project was between three: Journalism, Animal Rescue, or Marketing. She had told me the main reason she wants to do either of these three is because she feels like one of these will become her future career and be passionate about doing either one of these topics.

3. She told that what she plans to do for her 10 hours over the summer is to volunteer at the Poly post if she decided to follow the journalism path. For Marketing, she had mentioned doing some advertisement for her local library, or doing volunteer work at an animal shelter or the Humane Society if she did animal rescue for her project.

4. Vanessa had said that what she wants to see from the 2-hour presentations is to see how we manage our time during the presentation. Also, she wanted to ask about the process of how we got to this point in our senior project and what to do and not to do during the presentation.

5. The first question Vanessa asked is how I choose my senior project and how she should choose her's. What I had said to her is that it depends on the person. "The reason I choose mine is because I love the idea of doing a food based project." Also, I told her that it depends on how she want to approach the project, by doing something she knows she can do or doing something she is passionate about. The second question she asked was problems she might encounter. I had responded by telling her that finding a mentorship in ideal fields might be difficult because some places only take people at a certain age. Secondly, I had mentioned that research is going to be difficult to find when you reach the midpoint of the year because depending on the topic, research can be or not be difficult to find.

Blog #22: # Column Chart

Link:

3 Column Logic Chart