Give Them Cake

There’s a reason I stopped making cakes. There’s also a reason I still want to do it.

The last few days, my husband and I have been arguing, I mean, er, talking about me getting back into the cake business. With Washington’s new Cottage Bakery Law in place, it certainly will make it easier to do it legally this time, but my concerns over how to do it and not lose my sanity still persist. The time and energy needed to pull off a multi-tier wedding cake usually exceed my allotted allowance of both. However, when push comes to shove, I know I can do it.

I’ve fretted over a three tier fondant covered wedding cake until four in the morning for a cake that I wasn’t even getting paid enough to cover the cost of the cake because she was a coworker and couldn’t afford a nice wedding cake that wasn’t from Crapmart (our employer at the time) and it was the fourth of July and it was the second wedding cake I had to deliver that morning after working a nine hour shift the day before. I’ve taken time off to work on a wedding cake large enough to feed three hundred people because they were freaking out there wouldn’t be enough cake and ended up only needing enough for the thirty people who showed up for the wedding and stayed for the reception, not getting paid the extra amount they requested last minute or for the time off work I had to take to accommodate the request, and not having a way to legally get paid for it.

On the flipside, I’ve been able to explore so many different decorating techniques and learned how to decorate more efficiently that birthday and special event cakes were becoming quicker and easier to produce. Once during a dinner party I excused myself to frost and decorate 150 cupcakes and was back to enjoy the party in less than ten minutes. I’ve churned out a three tier Tinkerbell birthday cake with less than a day’s notice, albeit by cheating and using a plastic flying Tinkerbell topper instead of making one out of fondant or modeling chocolate. The less I use those skills, the more they slip away. The more they slip away, the less inclined I am to pick them back up again.

Perhaps it is time I look into all I need to do to become a legal cottage baker. Perhaps it is time to not be dictated by fear or afraid of a little hard work. Perhaps it is time to take another chance.