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.

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.

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.

Productive day at The Cake Mama's

Today was a very.... Productive day. When first entered the bakery, I was greeted with the smell of fresh cake coming out of the oven. The air was sweet with sugar, and I was ready to tackle the day.
Ashely had started me with a simple task of making some edible images, which I did with haste as I knew there was going to be a lot more fore me to do. The edibles I had done were quick and I ha jumped to the next task of making numbers the rest of the time. I had to prepare numbers from zero to nine.
During that time, I was ale by the financial officer, Corrine, to work on an order that she had just taken. I had to create forty-two disc that had '900' written on them. That task was relatively easy, but was still took up a lot of time.
After finishing that order, I ha continued to work on numbers, but unfortunately, because of how many numbers I had to prep, I did not get to finished them, but ashley that it would be ok because I can continue them the following day when I walked in.
The rest my day was consumed with cleaning dishes in the kitchen, frosting cupcakes for the front of the store, and helping customers. I think that this day was a relatively useful day because I had talked to Corrine about how I am doing in the bakery, and she had tile me that I am doing a great job, but that I needed to work on my focus so that I may get tasks done faster, and be able to focus on the task at hand instead of scattering my mind from the front of the house to the back.
So now I am learning how to focus on focusing on one task at a time and when it is a good time to jump in and help at the front/ back. Hopefully, they see improvement and decide to keep me.

Getting Ready For another Event

         On April 18th and 19th, the bakery had started to get ready for another event at Nordstrom in Brea Mall. We have been preparing a lot of items to sell, like Cake push ups and cake in a jar. We spent most of our day making a variety of items, but the one item I focused on making was the Cake Push Ups. My Mentor mentioned to me that doing these kids of events is great publicity for your business.
          Hopefully, I will be able to work on more of these events and learn a lot more.

First Day to a New Beginning

Total Hours worked: 7 hours

    Today, I had marked the beginning of my independent component, which is actually getting hands-on training at a bakery. When I first walked into Cake Mama's, they had automatically given me the duty to unstack dried fondant, which was probably the hardest and most painful things I ad done today. I had done this for about 30 minutes until my actually trainer, Ashley, had arrived due to traffic. 

   
    When she had first walked in, she had gave quick introductions, then put me straight to work. She first had me cut our different colored discs of fondant for cupcake toppers. This took about most of my time, being about 2 hours 30 minutes. After I had finished making about 5 trays of different discs of fondant, she put me on another project with gum paste, and putting printed images on them, which was really cool and interesting because it is something I have always be curious about how to do.


    I had made about some many fondant "toppers", that I was about to crack, until they gave me the chance to work with the fondant roller, which was so amazing! after that bit of excitement, I had gotten to work on the other orders that we had due this week, starting with the closest orders, to the later dated.

I had worked on all the decorations for the orders for another 3 hours because of the amount of orders there were and they amount of decorations we had to produce, and while I was at it, Ashley has taught me a lot new techniques and how to work with certain pieces of equipment.

When it was about 2 hours before closing, we had just finished with the decorations for the cupcakes, and I had started to clean up, and soon after, help with the incoming customers for another hour.

Ashley teaching me how to use a new tool for a laces.