Chocolate Festival

Chocolate fashion show, anyone?

I had the opportunity this weekend to go to the Festival of Chocolate at MOSI in Tampa. I had never even heard of this festival before, until I saw it on a billboard a few weeks earlier! I'm glad I was able to pop in for a couple of hours, though, because this event was cool.

There were samples, live competitions, chocolate and wine tastings, vendors, nifty science-y facts... Lots going on. Unfortunately I had to work during most of the events, but I hope to be able to attend and get more involved next year.

The event seems like a sweet precursor to what will hopefully be a very sweet 2014. (Puns intended.) This weekend is the ICES mini classes in Orlando, and I am way too excited for my own good to be driving so far out of my way. :-) And I'm hoping to hit up one or two cake decorating competitions to get that experience under my belt. (Strawberry Festival? Central Florida Fair? Who knows! I'll do them all!)

But if you're in Tampa around the end of January next year, I'd recommend stopping by The Festival of Chocolate. Maybe I'll even see you there!

And shout out to Grant for getting me to the festival this year!

What's not to love?

One of the vendors brought some display cakes. So gorgeous!

I'm a sucker for cute aprons!

ICES Classes

I've been wanted to attend another ICES event since I went to my first day of sharing my sophomore year of college. I woke up at 4 or 5 in the morning in order to drive to Jacksonville (which is pretty far from Tampa!) to attend, see the demos, and meet other cake aficionados like myself. And was it worth it? ABSOLUTELY. (And now I wake up that early almost every day to go to work!)

I remember my favorite demo was given by Geraldine Randlesome, and I met the girls of Simi Cakes, and I have to say, everyone there was amazing and talented and nice and wonderful. But unfortunately, that was the end of my experience with ICES.

Until now!

The FL ICES mini classes are just around the corner, and registration starts in October. I did a rough calculation, and if I'm going to take all of the classes I want to, it will run me roughly $800-$900 for all the fees. That's a lot of money for someone who only makes a couple bucks above minimum wage! But I've been trying to put money in savings every month, and I think this is a good thing to be saving towards. Cake decorating is still my passion, and how long have I wanted to get more involved with ICES? Too long! :) It's one of the reasons I wanted to move back to Florida, too, because the FL chapter always seems to have a lot going on!

Well, I know what I'll be asking everyone for Christmas!

There are so many great instructors that are going to be there, and I really hope I'll be able to finish up my Lambeth education with Kathleen Lange's bootcamps! Plus I want to get some more gumpaste and maybe even isomalt experience under my belt. My 10-year plan is to to become a Certified Master Sugar Artist, which is HUGE GOAL, but one I feel confident about if I can keep learning and practicing!

This One Really Did Fall Apart, and I Almost Did Too

So the other day at work was quite a nail-biting kind of day. I was supposed to deliver two cakes, but when I arrived at my first destination, and opened the van's trunk, I realized with great dismay, that cake #1 was broken.

The bottom tier of this beautiful three-tiered cake had slid apart, so the whole cake was leaning over and I was pretty sure I going to cry. Thankfully, the cake's recipients were very kind about the whole matter so I rushed back to the shop and had only an hour to fix this great catastrophe. But it's not like I could actually rush, because you have to drive like a grandma when you've got a cake in the back. But what could I do? I didn't want the other two tiers to break too!

How can I possibly let you know how terrifying this situation was? Even though I knew, "this is only a cake", and "I know I can frost this fast enough," and "This isn't the first time this has happened, and it won't be the last, so it's not a big deal." But. Still. I felt like I should've had TV cameras following me around today. This was some prime-time reality tv drama. Complete with exaggeration and hyperbole!

I ended up have to refrost the top two tiers, and the bottom tier had to be started over completely from scratch. Completely. From. Scratch. (Well, it didn't have to be baked, at least, thank God. We had some extra 10" cake layers lying around.) And there was only an hour and a half before the party started.

I don't think I my piping was as good as my coworker's was originally with the scrollwork, but the cake did look nice. And this time when I delivered, I packed up the three tiers separately and put it together on-location (which is also scary, because people are milling around and staring at you and the pressure is still on). And once I set everything up, it looked pretty good. Especially with all the room decor they had set up for the birthday.

So in the end, everything worked out fine. And the other cake that needed to be delivered was taken care of by one of my coworkers, and I'm so very grateful she was working that day too! :)