What I do. (Recent bakes!)

Oofa doofa, guys. I haven’t posted in 9 months! I won’t come to you with a long or elaborate sob story about life problems… the simple answer is just that I’ve been busy. About a 15 months ago I simultaneously took on more day job bakery work and moved into a new house, and those two things have filled my days. I am sad the blogging has fallen by the wayside, and I have no intention to close down PCM or stop writing for good.

That being said, I love my current gig. I have great co-workers and get to focus on the artistic side of things exclusively. Funny story: this bakery (Gabriel’s in Marietta, GA) is the same one I cut my baby decorator teeth at 9 years ago. Back then I was allowed to do some custom orders but mostly focused on production, because I simply didn’t have the experience to be in charge of the fancy stuff. I loved the woman that did our wedding cakes and daydreamed about having her job. Now I’m back a decade later doing almost exactly her job!

I thought I’d highlight what kind of cakes I make at my job. And hey, if you’re in the Atlanta, GA area and need a cake, you should absolutely contact Gabriel’s! Quick note: I don’t do consultations or design at this job, I just execute orders. I can only take credit for making the designs happen in meatspace, and also I can’t take your order.

Let’s start with what we do most frequently. Gabriel’s tends to specialize in buttercream cakes. Consequently, my job involves a lot of classic wedding cake designs with scrollwork, and these days the horizontal homestyle iced look seems to be a huge trend. I feel like decorators usually just post their most unusual orders on social media, but in almost any bakery this kind of cake is most of your output.

Frankly, I love making them. They’re a great chance to challenge yourself and set micro-goals to really nail a fundamental skill, like smooth icing or crisp corners.

Sometimes with weddings we’re talking some scrollwork. Sometimes we’re talking, like, a lot of scrollwork.

One technique I had never done before returning to Gabriel’s was quilting buttercream. Every other place I’d worked at would just go, “Nope, you’ve gotta get fondant if you want that.” These days I’ve got quilted buttercream on lock! Always good to add a new technique to my repertoire.

Geode cakes are pretty popular at the moment, and I also hadn’t done those before returning to Gabriel’s. I have a whole system for them now, and as with the others we usually do them with buttercream and not fondant. That adds a level of challenge to things, because rock candy likes to fall and mess up your icing. I’ve started using acetate strips to build little ramps so they roll away from my icing. I call it the candycoaster.

If I had to nail down another trend for the 2017/2018 cake world, I’d have to go with metallics. Which is fine by me, because I love metallics on cake.

Time to get into the more unusual stuff! We do our fair share of baby shower and children’s birthday cakes. My favorite: anything where I get to sculpt little baby animals. Also, pumpkins. I don’t know why, but I really love pumpkin themed cakes.

Sometimes I get to get super sculpt-y, like making cars. Since we’re in Atlanta we get a lot of Georgia Tech and University of Georgia orders, i.e. bulldogs and Ramblin’ Wrecks!

Sometimes I do big boys.

And sometimes I just get to do something funky for an adult’s birthday, which I also love.

I even get a chance to practice painting now and then, which is something I want to do in my free time and never seem to be able to make time for. I always feel a mild panic when it rolls around, but I almost always end up satisfied with the result and thankful for the practice.

So, that’s my job! I honestly couldn’t be happier with my work, and I hope it was at least somewhat interesting for you all. I do post cakes periodically on my Instagram, so follow me there if you want cake stuff in your timelines!

I’ll be back shortly with a post about 2 cakes I did outside of my day job. I’m particularly proud of the designs and I’m stoked to show them to you guys. Until then, have a great week!