Week 7 (a little late)

As promised these are the pictures from last week.

 

The Harry Potter cupcakes were completed and they are actually nutella frosting on rice crispy treats because the person they were for is gluten intolerant.

 Then a little spiderman and Metallica made their appearance.

 A couple of pretty (but boring) cakes, and a last minute chihuahua.

This is the "monster" cake. The bottom two tiers are fake but the thing still weight a ton and had to be moved by at least two people. We even had to build a special box out of two of the biggest moving boxes we could find (we called it frankenbox).

It's really all the little details that go into making this cake so festive and I for one think it's a much better wedding cake then the boring white ones.

The only cake related things we actually worked on, on Saturday, were these baby shower cupcake toppers (simple stuff).

Apologies

So I'm done with week 7 and I would love to tell you all about it but I forgot my camera at work and so have no pictures. I'll tell you about the exciting bits and hopefully have pictures to post on Tuesday. This is my second to last week, and how time flies, this week I got to train one of the other interns on cakes which makes me senior intern. I'm not sure I'm very good at training and I found it really hard to help Rosa to understand how to get the cakes perfectly smooth and straight. I had it come so naturally to me to keep my scraper level with the turn table but Rosa would tilt in making all of her cake sides bigger at the bottom than the top (and she wouldn't notice till it was too late to fix and she'd have to re-ice and start again). I spent the time working on icing a series of square cakes which has it's own set of challenges in getting the sides perfectly straight and parallel with each other. I thought I had done pretty well and Rosa's cakes were getting better but the next day James said that all the cakes needed another coat and so Rosa and I spent our time mixing colors and covering the cake boards including one truly massive board for the square cake that was so big (22in) that we had to roll it out as large as the mat would allow and then cut an X in the center to pull the edges further to cover the sides (a trick we used to cover and two largest square cakes too). We covered all but the square cakes and decorated them so we could focus on the square cake over the next two days.Thursday was Alison's (the owner) birthday and so we covered the square cakes and went around the outside making a groove in the center (they were to become suitcases) but then we went home at around 1pm because they were all going out for birthday celebrations. We came back the next day bright and early to finish decorating the suitcases. We made strips that looked like stitched leather to go around the tops and bottoms of each layer and corner pieces with little rivets. Some of the suitcases got straps, or snaps, or locks, or handles. Each tier was a little different and we added a lot of little details to make them look as real as possible. We finished them up with a sleeve poking out of one side and a bow tie sitting on the side and a very cheesy tie with red hearts all over it on the back. Saturday we boxed and took pictures of the cakes which I will post when I get my camera back. There wasn't much else to do so we helped out in the kitchen icing cakes for the shop and making pies and such. Another great week and next week is my last it's been a fu n time but I'm glad to be going home soon.

Long Weekend in Berlin

So I took Saturday off and had a 3 day weekend in Berlin, Germany. As you know, I left directly from work on Friday and headed to the Airport where I made my last update. My plane arrived on time and I was landing in Berlin by 8pm. Like Paris, Berlin has it's own train system but it's a mostly over ground system which is less interconnected then the Paris Metro. It also uses tickets but no one ever checks them and I probably could have gone the whole weekend without paying once. I stumbled my way through the system to my hostel and got to sleep so I could start my adventure early the next day. I woke up at 9am and went to the Berlin Hard Rock Cafe to pick up my "Berlin Pass" which provided me with 3 all day bus/train passes, a free hop-on hop-off bus ticket, a museum pass, and the Berlin pass which provided me access to over 50 different museums and attractions.

I chose to use my first day to ride the bus around and see the city. The bus had live commentary in both German and English which led to some very different views of the city. Some commentators were funny and witty others were very
informative giving specific dates and numbers and some were formulaic like they were reading from script. It was very interesting to hear all the different takes on the city.

 One of the things I found very interesting was the combination of old and new, like here with the Berlin TV tower standing above the Rotes Rathaus building. A lot of the city was destroyed during WW2 and the East and West sides were built up differently and some buildings were rebuilt from original plans but others were built with new (modern) building in mind. It leads to a very interesting city.

This building is a big carillon in the middle of Diplomat Park where a lot of the foreign embassies are.

 

On day 2 I decided to spend the day in museums.

I woke up at 8am so I could get to the Checkpoint Charlie Museum nice and early. They have a whole set up with a new checkpoint station and tourists blocking traffic so they can pay 2euro just to take a picture with these guys dressed up as US army men (though I'm pretty sure they're Germans). I also ate at the McDonalds you see in the background and I can say that the Germans make much better McDonalds food than the French and they give you nice big .5L drinks with refills.

Then I visited the Jewish History Museum which was designed by the same architect that's now designing "The Freedom Tower" in New York city. I gotta say Jewish history is depressing. They were oppressed in this century, then kicked out in that century, then were second class citizens in the next century and then there was the Holocaust which was really just the depressing tip on the Jewish iceberg.

The last museum I visited was the German Technology Museum which was filled with boats, trains, and planes from all eras of German history.

 I finished up my day by taking a boat tour along the river where you could see a lot of museums on museum island and some other interesting buildings.

My final day in Berlin I visited the Museum Island which has about 5 museums on it but 2 were closed on Mondays.

I managed to visit two of the Museums before my feet finally gave out and I decided to head to the airport. Interesting note, the Museum Pass that you can purchase at any of the museums (I got mine with the Berlin Pass) can get you into any of the museums on the island for three days. It does not, unfortunately, work at any of the museums NEAR the island such as the DDR Museum or the German History Museum which are both about a block away.


I caught my flight back to Paris which landed about 45mins later then scheduled and caught an entirely different train home then I got to the airport (and took three times as long) and got back to my apartment at about 12:40 in the morning. Knowing I had to be up at 6am I promptly fell into bed without eating or showering or unpacking. It was a fun trip and I really wish I had had more time. If/when I come back to Europe Germany is where I'm headed.

Week 6 Summed Up

So I'm gonna take a quick minute while I have free wifi at Paris's Orly Airport to post about finishing up my 6th week and the shop. I really can't believe it's already been six weeks and I only have two short weeks left of my internship. I'm super excited to get home though because I miss everyone terribly. This week was very slow in comparison to last week with only 7 orders. I'll post the pictures I have but most of the cakes go out tomorrow and I wont have pictures of them (James will e-mail them to me later).

 Here are the 4th of July toppers on their cupcakes ready to go out to the cafe. James said I did an excellent job with everything yesterday.

And now some cakes which I helped work on though I wouldn't consider any of them mine.

I very much like the Alice in Wonderland one.

And this is what I spent my time on, I did all the work for these including coming up with the designs. Being an avid Harry Potter fan helped out today as I knew all the house colors off the top of my head. It seems rather a waste to have spent so much time and only made one of each but now I know how and could do them all again.

Now I'm ready for my flight to Berlin where I hope I can find some free wifi and a power adapter for my electronics...otherwise it may be a very long weekend.

Week what is it now?

It has slowed down and I can definitely tell the difference between last week and this week. This week we only have 7 orders and most of them are one or two tier cakes with one 5 tier and one 4 tier. I managed to level, fill, crumb coat, and finish coat all the cakes in just one day with just a couple hours of help from James. Then we covered and stacked all of them on Wednesday with time to spare. Today, however, James was not there and I had a list of things to accomplish (which I did).

First I started by bringing a little piece of America to France with these 4th of July themed cupcake toppers for the cafe. I researched and designed all of these by myself (though the hotdogs were James' idea). I think it's rather funny they had the only American at the cake shop making these.

 Then I worked on some Alice in Wonderland mini cupcake toppers.

And finished up my day by making these Angry Bird figurines for a cake next week. All of my work today was a wonderful success in my eyes and I'm excited for James to see it all tomorrow.





P.S. I'm leaving for my weekend trip to Berlin right after work tomorrow and the hostel I'm staying in doesn't have wifi so I may end up making one very big post when I get back on Monday night.