cookie factory

My brother in law is participating in a small local charity event tomorrow and offered to let us have a small display at this booth. We decided to offer up a tray of cookies for people to snack on and we also have our own raffle going on. The winner will get an oversized sampler of some super tasty stuff. For anyone who wants to stop by, the details are;

Salt Lake sCiKoTiCs Birthday Bash
and Teddy Bear Patrol

Day / Date: Saturday August 1 2009
Time: 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Place: Iceberg Drive Inn
Address: 13400 South 5049 West, Riverton UT 84065

Scikotics are just a local car club that love Scions, no need to protect the young and elderly from this group :).

Tonight we've been playing cookie factory and baking a lot of cookies. Mike has become involved in the baking and he made all the cookies tonight with minimal supervision. I've been told that I have a talent when it comes to baking but sometimes I feel that anyone can do it, it's just following instructions. Well, tonight we found out that my instructions are not very clear. When I typed out the recipes I didn't bother with all the details of how long to mix things and what size the cookie dough should be when placed on the baking sheet. These are all details that I know, that are engrained in my soul and I didn't consider the fact that someone else might be using my recipes. Oops. Everything still turned out great and now my recipes are in tip top shape.

just because they're quick doesn't mean they're easy

I've been working out and testing recipes for quick breads and it's a lot of work. So far I've come up with a bunch of duds. I tried my hand at a blueberry oatmeal bread and it was so bland and dry. Since I had 2 loaves I tried to make good use of it by making french toast out of it but it was so dry that it fell apart. I just had to move on, too frustrating!

I tried out an apple rhubarb bread that I absolutely loved the flavor of but it was very ugly and the texture was off. Rhubarb is a little difficult to get and the taste isn't super common so I'm wondering if it's even worth messing around with to get the texture right. My sister liked it so maybe I'll mess around with it a little later on.

I've also tried to master a sweet potato bread. I love sweet potatoes and in my world there is nothing tastier than a sweet potato french fry. Mmmhmm. I tried two variations of a recipe and both turned out way too sweet and spicy and the sweet potato flavor was completely lost. The looked beautiful, smelled beautiful but in the end I was left with just another sweet bread with no impressive flavor. I am definitely going to mess around with the spice and potato ratio, I love sweet potatoes too much to just give up on this one.

busy bee

So I've fallen off the face of the earth since a week or two before my sisters wedding and the few weeks after. I am happy to say that I have rested and am now ready to get my butt into action regarding the bakery. I've been doing research today and was elated to sign up for some free workshops and counseling at SCORE. The SCORE gang offers free advise to those of us who are crazy enough to start their own business. I think that after these meetings I'll not only be super pumped to get this puppy rolling but I'll have some advice as to which direction to put my energy towards.

For the time being I'm still working on recipes but need to focus more on packaging. I'm one tiny step away from finishing the kitchen before scheduling the inspection with the dept of ag. One of my sisters friends offered to help with photographing my items now I just to find someone to help me with my graphics for the website and marketing.

spicy goodness

Today we got my freezer, the last big purchase. I've been working on converting the recipes and by tomorrow I should have that completed. Up next is making every single thing to test the size, packaging and shelf life. I'm going to have A LOT of cookies over the next few weeks. 

Speaking of cookies, today I made a batch of pumpkin chocolate chip in order to test out a new recipe. Overall a pretty good success, just needs some minor tweaking. I made the pumpkin because my husband loves spice cookies and he's been working all weekend so I wanted to make a little treat for him. To make sure that I have everything that I need I made the cookies with the bakery items. It was great to have everything in one spot. I knew where everything was and it was magical. I didn't have to dig around, pull out stuff in order to get to what I needed. I feel so grateful to have this opportunity and to have such a supportive husband. 

Sorry for the crappy pic, I just used photo booth for convenience sake. 

mediocre people do exceptional things all the time

We've been working hard on getting this whole cottage kitchen together, so hard in fact that I rarely have the energy to update. On Sunday we took on the task of emptying out our storage cabinet in the kitchen in order to delegate it as 'bakery only'. One of the requirements for a cottage kitchen is to have your everyday utensils (spoons, mixing bowls, rolling pins..everything!) separate from the items you need to use in order to run a bakery. I thought that reorganizing the kitchen would be quick and somewhat easy but my husband as a touch of OCD and had a strong opinion of where things should go. I only wanted to use half of the storage unit, he wanted me to use all of it. After much negotiation I am happy to announce that our ikea storage unit in the kitchen devoted to the bakery. Whew. 

Last night we bought a great mini fridge for the bakery. Not only do I have to keep my cutting boards and mixing bowls separate but I also have to keep anything that needs to be refrigerated  or frozen separate. This new fridge seems a little large at first since I basically need it to store eggs, milk, butter but I also realized that down the line I might be doing cakes and I need a fridge to chill the cakes while I'm setting them up and frosting them. While doing my sisters practice wedding cake I quickly realized that the fridge is a necessity in cake construction. Soon enough I'm going to get a chest freezer to keep in the basement. Aside from business insurance, the fridge and freezer are the biggest investment so I consider last night the no turning back point. 

I've been working on converting my recipes from bits of paper that are scattered around into excel spreadsheets. I have to submit my recipes to the Dept of Food and Agriculture to ensure that they are people friendly so I figured that I might as well just get them all in one place and consistent. I'm also reading through all the documentation that the Dept emailed me and starting to get a grip on what's going on. My plan is to focus all my energy on getting this thing going until the distraction of my sisters wedding. 

Short and honey sweet

I'm really tired so this is going to be pretty short a sweet. 

After some stress at the bakery I currently work at, I suddenly found the encouragement to get my butt in action in regards to The Bumbling Bee. Mike and I went on a shopping spree to get duplicates of all the items I need in order to run a bakery since bakery items have to be kept separate from everyday living items. Needless to say, it's a long list and thus a long day of errands. 

Today I registered the name at all the hot spots, gmail, twitter .. you know, all of the places that the cool kids hang out. 

I do indeed have the sweetest cakes

With my sisters wedding peeping it's head around the corner I decided that I needed to do a practice wedding cake. The few tiered cakes that I've attempted have turned out well.. not good.. so I really wasn't comfortable giving it a go the day before the wedding. I set myself a delivery date in order to get myself in check.

Ok, so I'm going to disclose a secret that apparently only those in the food industry know. When you get a cake chances VERY likely that at some point in it's life it's been frozen. I know I know! The nerve! You wanted something fresh! Logistically it is pretty much impossible to have a business run on cakes that are made to order. I know that some bakeries do claim that they do this but they either have 18 people on staff or only do 1 cake a week. So, for the rest of us in the real world we bake cakes in a larger quantity and freeze them. In fact, at the grocery store I worked at we didn't bake a single cake. All those sheet cakes that go flying out the doors? Frozen. All those pretty cakes in the display case? Either frozen cakes that are decorated on site and some are even brought into the store already decorated. Crazy, I know, it surprised me too. But the truth is people, I don't use preservatives in my baking and in order to keep items fresh and tasty, I freeze them. Trust me, you would never be able to tell, they taste fantastical.

I disclose the dirty secret about the freeze because after buying the pan I quickly realized that a 14" cake was not going to fit into my side by side freezer. In order to keep the cake from drying out I had to bake the cakes close to the delivery date and since I only had 1 pan I had to bake them at separate times. All in all it worked out and I no longer fear over sized cakes. 

The bottom layer of the cake was a vanilla cake with a filling of pastry cream and fresh raspberries. The middle layer was a lemon cake with layers of lemon curd and butter cream frosting. The top cake was a chocolate cake the a chocolate mousse filling. My sister didn't ask for chocolate but I was so sick of making lemon that I had to do a chocolate one in order to keep my sanity. I covered each layer with marshmallow fondant. In a nutshell this thing was a BEAST. I am not comfortable in disclosing how much butter I used in it but I will say that it was A LOT. I was covered in powdered sugar from making the marshmallow fondant but it was worth it because it was super tasty and way better then your typical fondant. The bottom layer of the cake is a little jacked up, I wasn't striving for perfection and when the fondant started to stick to itself when I was applying it to the cake I just kept going. Of course I would have redone the fondant if this was anything but a practice cake. I also didn't want to really decorate it but had some gum paste flowers hanging around so I used them to cover the seams.

All in all, a huge success. The cakes were tasty, the cake was sturdy and the whole experience was a huge esteem boost when it comes to the actual wedding cake.