Last day of my First Week

I have officially completed my first week at the SugarPlum Cake Shop. I'm very excited not to have to wake up early for the next couple days (I say this as I'm typing at 4am because I fell asleep as soon as I got home and have just woken up). Today we worked on decorations for cakes and cupcakes that wont be needed for a couple weeks. I spent most of the day working on decorations for a travel themed wedding cake that's in July but has 2000 euro worth of decoration on it.

We made a 2D London bus.











And a 2D taxi and a 3D camera.

 We also worked on some petals for poppy flowers on another cake.

And here is a picture of the fruit I made yesterday.

Everyone at work was asking about my weekend plans and I'm not sure yet what I'll do. Perhaps I'll take pictures of the little things around town like where I live and the metro stations and whatnot, but it'll also be nice to just relax and have a couple days to myself. I will keep you all posted and keep checking back for more of my exploits in Paris!

Day 4

My readership is way down and I think it's due to lack of pictures so you'll be happy to know I have pictures today. On Fridays we take pictures of the cakes and box them for pick up. Today I also got to make little bananas and strawberries for the cupcakes in the cafe's case.

Like I said yesterday, I didn't really get to help with the details that you can see on the outside but I leveled and filled half the cakes and rolled all the fondant that's on the outsides so there's a lot of my hard work in those cakes. I particularly like the steampunk cake that's for the cake decorators husband, it reminds me of my chocolate sculpture I did for my class.------------------------------------------------------------>
I'm excited for next week we have 5 cakes with varying themes and the other intern is only there for two days so I'm hoping to get to do some more of the covering of cakes and detail work.

Day 3

So on Thursdays we decorate up the cakes, lots of little detail work to take the cakes from blank canvases to finished product. Too bad I didn't get to do any of that. When I arrived there was three of us on the cake side and only one person in the kitchen so I was asked if I could help out in the kitchen today. I did gladly (anything to help) and I learned several of the recipes they use. I started by learning how to turn on all the equipment then I made the icing which happens to be a swiss meringue buttercream where I learned to use an induction burner. I also learned a neat trick for working with glucose (a very sticky, corn syrup like substance) where you dunk your hands in cold water and then the glucose doesn't stick to you, a handy thing to know for my future sugar work. I then made carrot cake, pecan pies, chocolate chip cookies, and chocolate cake, I also did a lot of dishes. While I didn't mind helping out I came to SugarPlum to expand my skills in cake decorating and today was the day all the finish work I wanted to learn got done and I didn't learn anything about it. All I could think was how I could have stayed at Wholefoods and made cookies and cake and I would have been being payed for it. The thing that gets my back up is that the other intern wants to open her own cake shop in Singapore but she can barely work the dishwasher much less the mixer or the ovens. She fully admits to never working a single day in the kitchens of SugarPlum and while I'm sure her schooling has taught her the basics of cake baking there's a big difference between school and the real world, I would know better then most. If it comes up again I'll have to air my grievances but for today I'm glad to have gained the knowledge of how to work the bakeries equipment, what recipes we use in the bakery, and where everything is kept in the bakery.

Second day of Work

Today was my second day at the SugarPlum Cake Shop. On Wednesdays they cover the cakes with fondant and create decorations for the cakes. It was tiring work rolling out fondant for all 12 of those cake tiers and their wood bases and half way threw the day we found out on of the 2 tiers was canceled (something that doesn't normally happen as they have people pay for their cakes before the week they would be made). When cakes don't sell they usually offer them to people who want to order cakes late in the week for the weekend but unfortunately the cake is a citrus cake with orange blossom icing and is unlikely to sell. We stacked up the 5 tier cake tho and it weights a ton, tomorrow it'll get hearts all over it and a couple big (gumpaste) cherries on top. We dyed a bunch of fondant peach for another cake that has lace (provided by the client) around the tiers. Something to note: I was told many times today I was rolling the fondant too thin and all I could think was how my teachers would reprimand me for putting suck thick fondant on my cakes, it must have been 1/4in thick and I was told to roll it thicker. Now I never had any of it sent back cause it ripped or you could see the cake threw it (which is what I was told was the reason I had to roll it thicker next time) but I'll have to adjust myself. We finished the day making bollywood themed cupcake toppers. I made elephants out of modeling chocolate and little flowers (and other decorations) out of gumpaste. Probably because we had 3 people we finished up early and I was told I could go home but the kitchen manager had other plans for us helpless, unpaid, interns. We got roped into leveling and layering some cakes for the cafe's pastry case (which I was happy to do for the practice). We finished up around 2:15 but I couldn't leave without doing some dishes for the poor kitchen crew who's sink was completely full. I was thanked for helping out and I still got to leave half and hour early. Took the train back to the apartment and this old woman is looking at my book over my shoulder. I get up to get off the train and she starts speaking to me (in French of course) and I didn't even have time to explain to her I don't speak French because the train is going to leave so I said "Oui, merci" I hope I answered correctly.

First day of Work

Today was my first day on the job. I woke up at 6:15am and made it to work by 7 without incident. On Tuesdays they fill and coat the cakes with buttercream. We had four cakes for this week, one 5 tier, one 3 tier, and two 2 tier cakes. Each one was a different flavor of cake with different flavors of fillings. We pulled the cakes out of the freezer first thing so they could thaw. I learned to level a cake to a certain height because at SugarPlum they have very specific heights for each level of cake (for normal tiers it's 3cm on bottom and 2.5cm for the second and third layers but they have tall and short tiers the are different) and each layer of icing is 1cm. We leveled 36 cakes in total to make into our 12 tiers. We started assembling the cakes but we had to wait for fillings to be made (for the most part the fillings are just the standard buttercream with different flavorings added). Each cake got brushed with simple syrup or fruit puree before getting filled with the flavored filling. The tiers are all iced with vanilla buttercream and we did a crumb coat and a finish coat with refrigeration in between. It's very important to the finished product that each coating is smoothed to perfection and I took a lot of time making sure my coats were super smooth for when we cover them in sugarpaste. Tomorrow we'll be making the different decorations which will include a couple cherries, lots of hearts, some butterflies, a pacifier and more. All the order forms are in French and I can understand about half of it but I'm sure there were more decorations I missed cause I didn't know what the words meant. Four cakes doesn't seem like much and there was definitely some down time today but it was good to start slow and I expect it to get busier as the wedding season get into full swing.

Bus Tour (day 3)

Last day of my bus pass and as soon as I stepped outside I saw it was a dreary, rainy, cold day like Saturday was. Now when it's rainy the open topped buses become a down side as there are hardly any seats in the bottom of the bus where it is warm and dry and they are all in the top of the bus with great views but it's rainy and windy. So when the weather is bad everyone packs into the bottom of the bus or pulls out their umbrellas and tries not to loose them while on the top of the bus (btw if you're umbrella goes inside out it's not the end of the world, you can pull it back into shape or face it into the wind and it'll pop back). I walked to the bus stop the whole time thinking "well it's Monday so it wont be that busy" on the bus or at the monuments. Well this thought didn't quite take in all the facts, yes it's Monday but it's a tour bus going to tourist spots and most tourists are on vacation...so Monday doesn't really mean much. The bus was crowded especially on the bottom and I sat at the top, freezing. I rode the bus around to a few sites but they were just as busy as they had been yesterday and I didn't really feel like spending my last day of "vacation" waiting in line, nor did I really want to spend it freezing on the top of a bus so I decided to head home.
In hind sight I really didn't need the third day on the pass but the difference between the two day pass and the three day pass was 4 euro so I feel I would have been silly not to have taken the third day but by today I was all touirst-ed out. I'm choosing to spend the rest of my day at home watching movies, reading my book, and surfing the web. Sorry about the lack of pictures.

Musee Grevin

I also visited the Paris wax museum and it made me very glad I didn't visit Madame Tussauds when I visited London because all those wax figures kind of creep me out. Every time I turned a corner I thought someone was standing there but it was just the wax statues (most of the time), all the mirrors around the place didn't help with the disorientation. The first room you go threw is completely black and they start a light show set to music that is made more interesting by the fact that the room is entirely mirrors. Here are some of my favorite figures they had.

Musee du Chocolat

While riding around I saw a museum dedicated to chocolate and I knew my mother would let me live it down if I didn't visit.

It was very interesting tho there wasn't much to take pictures of but they gave a demonstration on filling chocolate truffles and there were samples. I wish the guy doing the demonstration spoke more English I had many questions to ask him, but after a few simple questions I'm not sure he could have answered me even if he did speak flawless English. I got mother a big bar of dark chocolate...too bad she wont get it for 2 months.

Bus Tour (day 2)

As I said yesterday my bus ticket was good for three days so I spent today on the buses again. The day was sunny and beautiful the with hardly a cloud in the sky. This time I mostly traveled the yellow and blue lines and got to see more of the city.  I enjoyed riding on the open topped buses with the wind in my hair and the sun on my back.

At about 4:30 I decided to head back home knowing that the buses would take awhile to get around. So I switched from the Blue line to the Green line that would travel around to all the major monuments before dropping me at the Yellow line that would take me to the apartment (as you can see this route could take awhile). The Green line is an excellent ride around to the Louvre, Notre Dame, Musee D'Orsay, Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower, and more. It usually takes an hour to an hour and a half to get all the way around, and there is a section where I could have hopped off at stop 9 and walked a block to stop 18 cutting out most of the route but it was a lovely day and I had nothing else to do so I rode it all the way around. Now what I didn't realize was that there was some sort of tennis match going on under the Eiffel Tower (2014 French Open it turns out).

There were police out in force and they had roads blocked off and traffic backed up for miles. During this route the bus travels down the Champs-Elysees Avenue which provides a great view of the Arc de Triomphe and as you ride down it plays Champs Elysees by Joe Dassin on repeat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9V-zUlrhEE&feature=kp), not usually a big deal as the ride only takes 10mins or so but with the traffic backed up it took near 30mins with that song on repeat the whole time and I had it stuck in my head for the next 2 hours. All this extra time with traffic meant I didn't get to my stop for the yellow line till 6:30 or so. Now I had read the schedule and how it said that buses ran from 9:30am-7:50pm but in another section it says the last bus runs at 6:30, so I catch the last yellow bus and the driver informs everyone that it's going to go to Gare du Nord and stop. Not where I needed to go but closer then I was right then so I sucked it up and thought "I'll just walk from there". Well it did go to Gare du Nord but what the driver didn't say is that the bus would go strait there without going by any of the stops and then drop you off on a corner the bus usually never even goes to. So I had an interesting ride back and a bit of a long walk but I made it back to the apartment with little incident.

Arch De Triomphe

I didn't get off the bus many places but I really wanted to see the Arch de Triomphe so I got off to check it out. There is a huge round-a-bout with cars zipping around going in all directions (and again no lines, so no way of knowing where they're going).

 For the longest time I couldn't figure out how I was going to get across all that traffic so I could actually get to the arch but I saw people over there so I knew it was possible.

I circled around the arch taking pictures as I went and eventually found an underground passage that wasn't really marked but it had to be the way people were getting over there. I went down the tunnel and popped out under the Arch.










Again you could pay to go up into the arch but I chose not to due to money and the line. I know Paris probably gets a lot of it's income threw tourism but the way they charge you for every little thing I'm surprised the bathrooms are free. Considering that they were doing construction up there I'm not sure how much you could have seen anyways so I enjoyed my view from the ground and took pictures from lots of angles.

Then something I didn't know was there till I was listening to the audio tour was the grave of the unknown soldier which they have lit and covered with flowers, very nice.

Statues Around Paris

As I traveled on the buses I noticed that there were hundreds of statues and fountains all over Paris, all beautiful works of art. I took pictures of everyone I could and I'll post some here and possibly add more as I find them.