A little bit of everything
Happy New Year!
I decided on some easy resolutions that I was going to adapt anyway into my life, but thought hey.. resolution. I know not everyone feels they need to have resolutions but here’s mine.
- The obvious one, lose weight, which ties in with
- Stop working so hard!
- Socialise more and make new friends
- Work on hobbies and DIY crafts
They all tie in together. In 2011 I started getting REALLY busy with work just after my birthday, and then I pretty much worked for the entire rest of the year without stopping. Friends stopped inviting me to random stuff, so I was left out on my own in the wilderness. And because I was working so much, I ate terribly – because I was too tired to make food or didn’t have any time/allocated all my energy to work.
Also because my hobby has turned into my work, I need to replace those hobbies, so we got an Xbox so I can get back into gaming, and I love DIY crafts! So that sorts all my resolutions. I’m getting a Kinect next week, so looking forward to that!
First up I decided with my work that I wasn’t going to overbook myself but also manage my funds better. I was going to stop giving leeway to customers – I gave away free delivery a lot – and my time is valuable. They can come and pick it up I’m sure! And I was going to take less orders, but spend more time on them, so then everyone was happier overall. I would feel much better about it. So that’s what we’re doing.
I hope that changing all of this helps 2012 be awesome, so I have time for everyone and everything. I always know some ways to help supplement income if things get dire and I can always take more orders when my social life is quiet.
I also started a small little dinner club to gather people in my city so we can explore new restaurants and cafes. 
Here’s to 2012. Also celebrating three years with Michael! :)
If I never have to bake another macaron again I seriously think it will be too soon.
So many problems this week. Cracked shells. Overheating. Underbaking. Weak meringue, weak egg whites. Bad frozen egg white batches. Delayed deliveries of stock. 4:30am late nights. Running out of butter. Stabbing my fingers with toothpicks. Allergic reactions. Spreading macaron feet, sticking to sheets, cracking, crumbling, crushing. 2000 macarons and so many disasters throughout the week I just wanted to poke my own eyes out or break a limb so I could find an escape and I would get out of it and it would be over.
But it wasn’t over and there was no way out, so I tried not to get emotional and just pushed through until the end. Until the painful end at 6pm yesterday when I got into the car. We were so tired my mother left her KEYS on the back of my car by accident, and I drove home from the city with them.. And they didn’t fall off.
Am I pleased with the effort? You know I’m not. I never am. There’s always anxiety. Being the stupid perfectionist of my work I know that we could have done better. It looked impressive as a whole in the end. But I felt everyone judging me. And I always do. And I see all the faults. I am sure people there may see them – some of them were cracked as we put them on (toothpick hazard) and they will crack when they are pulled off the towers but that’s thanks to the toothpicks crushing the shells as they’re placed onto the cones.
Macarons are fiddly and fussy little bastards, and that’s the summary of it. To have a perfect macaron, it should be a super smooth shell, with raised feet that do not extend outside the diameter of the shell, with a crisp crunch and a gooey centre. We achieved this on about 70% of the macarons on the towers, but something changed and they started to hit the deck as we got towards the end of the week.
I put my life on hold for five days and tomorrow I have to play catch up. It’s weeks like this one that make me want to chuck it all in.
Related: Less than 18 days until my 5 day Christmas holiday break.
If it hasn’t already sucked up hours of your life, it will now. While I’m a little late to the Pinterest game, I actually consider it a good thing because then everyone has already had the chance to do all the pinning and collecting for me to peruse through.
It’s a graphical version of a bookmark manager, and you can follow peoples boards (like specific folder groups). Each bookmark is called a pin, and clicking on the image links back to the website you originally found it from (usually, unless you upload it directly).
It has helped me find heaps of quirky fun tutorials and styling ideas, so I have already wasted a good 2-3 days on it! How much time have you wasted?
I can’t believe I have this book! My housemate now has my old job at the bookstore, so she calls or texts when there’s new cake books in. Which is great because if I go in there weekly, I will spend WAY too much money on books when I don’t have the space.
After a little research, this book actually isn’t meant to be released until November 2nd. It’s still October.
WHICH MEANS I CAN REVIEW IT!
I bought it before looking through it because I adore Planet Cake (isn’t that love). First up, it’s not a book full of recipes and big cake ideas, so some people are going to buy this and be disappointed. I know the book that I’m featured in disappointed a lot of people because it was a coffee table book and nothing more, but was perfect as an inspiration book.
Planet Cake Celebrate is full of mini cake and cupcake decorating ideas for parties, charity events and more. It has many small projects with minimal preparation and committment on the host/hostess part, and that’s where I think this book will be very successful.
There’s no doubt about the fact that cake decorating has exploded in Australia in the last two years. In the last three months, the main Wilton importer in Australia has sent customers regular emails about trying to keep up with the huge demand they are experiencing. My local suppliers will get a shipment in and be almost out of stock again immediately (I may be part of the reason).
This book has party ideas for bridal showers, birthdays, team building, charity events, school fundraisers etc, but you could adapt any of the mini projects to suit your own event. I host a lot of cupcake decorating parties for Hen’s Nights and kids birthday parties so I know it will be another hit book from Planet Cake.
From the Planet Cake website
Each project has very high quality step by step photos (I’ll replace that with a better photo later) and again, Paris Cutler has written the book so that you don’t need to source out all of the equipment you may only use once.
Looks like a winner to me, but I already love this kind of thing, so if you love cake decorating like I do, you’ll add it to her previous two titles in your bookshelf.
Planet Cake Celebrate is officially out on November 2nd: See their website here.
Kelley always had it right.
My first real mixer was a Sunbeam bench mixer, which died after nearly a year (about 6 months of that was in storage because I had the wrong beaters after moving out of a place I lived at).
I sold the beaters because bench mixer spare parts are apparently valuable… but I still have the bowl (why would you throw out an awesome bowl!)
After that I went back to a hand mixer I was given back when I first started baking, and that burnt out too!
I decided to have a bit of a look around for a new bench mixer, and picked up a second hand Kenwood Junior Chef. It’s good, but I can’t use it for macarons.
The problem with most bench mixers is in the mixing technique. Most of them you can buy spin the beaters and the bowl, however the planetary ones (Kitchen Aid, for example) spin the head of the beaters in a circle as well as spinning the beaters at the same time, making sure to get all around the bowl. With my bench mixer, it would spin the bowl and then propel the egg whites over to the opposite side of the bowl and not actually whip the egg whites at all.
Also with all mixers, not just all the bench ones, you have to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl as well! Sorry no way to escape that 
A few months later (July 2011) we had a really large 1500 cupcake order, and in that week I burnt out two different no name hand mixers. Last weekend I destroyed another one, so it’s good a $15 hand mixer lasted from July until now with huge huge amounts of use.
I really need to invest the money to buy a KitchenAid but I just can’t justify spending $800 all at once and not having any backup money for work. Blergh!
Also unfortunately, it looks like Layby is not an option – there are two types of Kitchen Aids, with most homewares retailers selling the Artisan one, but I need the Deluxe one. The difference is in how the bowls are mounted (and difference in the motor). The Deluxe one I want has a crank handle that lifts the bowl up to the beaters, which is also what I used at my Patisserie course at TAFE.
Oh well, we’ll get there one day
That I should update more! I don’t really keep a diary of my life these days, and when I look back I can’t remember things.
A couple of weeks ago I was clearing out my memory card from the good work camera, when I came across a bunch of customer orders I didn’t remember. I mentioned this to my housemate, who said proudly, “I remember all your orders.”
“What about this one?”
“Uhhhhh, nope.”
So we’d both forgotten a whole section of orders. Turns out Michael did too, and I pinpointed it to the time where I was sick in bed for a week. Whenever I get a few days break to myself, I am sick in bed/on the couch and waste the entire time asleep.
It’s been nearly five months since this order, and things are just getting busier and busier. This weekend just past is a very slight exception, but most weeks we’re starting weekend preparation on Thursday for Friday and Friday for Saturday and so on. There’s no break on Monday, I usually have classes, and now people place orders for mid-week birthdays and baby showers as well. So it’s pretty much non-stop.
I am enjoying my work but with a one tray oven capacity and no storage space, I’ve reached my limit. To be honest though, I reached my limit just after the order I forgot, and now my dining and kitchen areas are crammed full of baking gear.
Hopefully the next few months will bring some sort of solution. Until then, more blog posts I think.
