Four things a student should know to pass this course:

• Pick a topic you love to talk about
• Do your research & continuously update your work
• Prioritize time and work load with other class work/job schedules & remember to keep on top of it
• Set a reminder on your device for online postings the day before it’s due

• Do NOT leave out – you must keep your undecorated cake in the freezer to retain moisture.
• The freezer is the best option over the refrigerator. Your cake is more prone to drying out if it is left in the refrigerator
• Make sure that the cakes that are on display are not out for too long. It will try up very quickly.
• When it is placed in the freezer, make sure it is wrapped up tightly so there is no air that enters through the holes. It is best to use plastic wrap

Before we talk about cake, it is important for us to know a little about it’s history. Cake designing is a skill that has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years. It’s history steams back from Europe during the 17th century. According to a study from Kathleen Lange, a master of cake designing, in ancient Rome, the brides would participate in a ceremony called “Crowning the Bride” where cake, usually fruit cake, was crumbled over the bride’s head so that the gods would bless her and her spouse with abundance. Fruit cake was commonly used during this time because they offered the ingredients such as fruits, nuts, and honey as an appeasement to the gods.

The first decorations steamed from Queen Elizabeth I’s reign in England. At this time, they mostly molded with almond paste. They needed to have extraordinary center pieces to mostly impress the noble guests. Wedding cakes were baked as separate cakes, or more like buns, with a sticky coating of almond paste. It was passed around to the party and any extras would then be piled before the bride and groom (in which they were expected to kiss over it  which symbolized blessings with prosperity & many children). Not long after, these little buns had been converted to one large cake.

Custom cakes are physical works of edible art. So much thought, time, and energy go into making just one cake. I love it because it’s so personal to that customer. Years ago, custom, well decorated cakes weren’t as big as they are now. Cake was always present at an event, but there was no “wow” factor, or personal touches added much. My doing a cake based on the customer’s wants/needs, we are making their ideas they formulate, or couldn’t even formulate, come to LIFE right before their eyes. When making custom cakes for my clientele, it means so much to even be being apart of their life events and celebrations. The cake is not the center of attention the whole event, but it gets it’s praise and admiration for a part of it (especially when it taste good). Making custom/specialty cakes involve much more than what meets the eye. It involves math, engineering when building something large and/or lifelike, science, gastronomy, art, geology of where some special ingredients used are from, and much, MUCH more. There are so many different components that go into this, it’s incredible. There is always, always something to learn when it comes to cake baking and decorating. So the next time you see a beautifully decorated cake, don’t just look at it as the finished product, try to imagine what it took to make that one dessert.

Baking from scratch is great for bakeries to control the ingredients they are putting in their products and how much of it. It is also a lot cheaper baking from raw ingredients rather than using box cakes or cake mixes. The only problem is, employment. Where they would save on ingredients, they would spend even more on employment and their labor. It is cheaper to hire someone with minimum baking experience to simply combine cake mix, water, and eggs together than hiring and training professional bakers who use special techniques. Saving a buck on labor is a deal breaker for most bakeries. It is a lot more work to bake a cake from scratch with handmade decorations. This then effects the cost of the cake. The more work the baker does, the more expensive that cake will be for the customer. If the cake is too expensive, the bakery wouldn’t get many sales (Unless they are professional, extravagant, well known, and have upper class clientele). This is one of the main reasons why some specialty cakes look so good, but taste so bad. They’re holding out on ingredients when using the standard cake mix. There has to be another way around this, there has to be a change.

The reason why I chose this topic is to shed light on this coming up judgement of custom cakes. I have gotten a lot of comments from people saying that when purchasing a custom/specialty cake, it is a hit or miss. Some people say that it may be a beautiful cake, but the flavor of the cake itself is NOT up to par. On the other hand, some people say that when they purchase a custom/specialty cake, it is not (visually) exactly what they wanted, however the taste is pleasantly surprising.

Basically, for this paper, I want to address this problem and research WHY some bakeries make cakes that only “look good or taste good”. Can a paying customer have their cake and eat it too?

They should.