I never seem to be happy. Either I'm crazy busy and up to my elbows with getting my baking business off the ground, or it's the silent parts between where I'm supposed to be resting a planning, but really, I'm just plagued by my own thoughts.
Getting my own business off the ground has been hectic. I know logically, that no matter how good you are at whatever you do, it can take up to a year for you to find your footing, a good customer base and start to receive a return on investment.
I decided to take my other most popular blog, public, and make a business out of baking and my God has it been a learning curve. I thought I had it all figured out with my pretty spreadsheets and nd recipes, but jeesh have I discovered how different things are when you're "in the weeds" or frantically dipping biscuits and crying into meted chocolate at 4am.
I've had to learn about wastage, measurements ( just a two cm difference from a 28 cm round tin to a 30cm round tin can mean a need for double the batter which as it turns out, I have a3 x 26cm 2 x 26 cm tins 1 x 28 cm tin and I do not own a 30cm tin - explains why why print didn't fit 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️- as I was taught by my 1st custom commission cake, where I got the print size wrong and had to make a bigger cake to compensate - although it actually still wasn't big enough). Just 2cm cm in diameter can mean the need for a double batch of batter. which is exactly what happened. LOVED it, but what should have been a simple cake turned out to be so complicated - mostly due to my own laziness. I made assumptions about the sizes of my tins and I didn't "Feel" like making a buttercream crumb coat which would have saved me so much labour and cost me a crapload less in ganache. I made a huge mess, 1st of all... because I was rushing with ganache icing that was too warm.
I eventually stuch the cake away and went to go nap and I think the rest did us both good. I was able to smooth out the ganache really beautifully with a warmed butter knife and was able to fill in some gaps with the remaining chocolate, which I reheated a bit as it had gone hard and although I didn't want it like liquid lava like I had before, I still needed it to be "spreadable." I also needed to use it as glue to stick the fondant to the cake which would them create a stable base for the rice paper print which I did not want to TOUCH until all the icing was done.
The ganache ended up costing me a shitload in chocolate ganache. I mean I used 1kg instead of 500g. Double the batter, double the chocolate... I basically just barely covered cost. I couldn't cover the cake properly (obviously not: because I had the measurements wrong) And on top of everything the client collected two hours before the arranged time which meant I had to do two hours of finishing touches in 25 minutes. Look, the clients loved , I mean LOVED it. I think they were quite trashed when they opened the box so I guess that worked in my favor. Apparently they ate the rest of the cake for breakfast. At least they didn't ask for a refund or leave me a nasty review, right?
But Id definitely wasn't my prettiest as I didn't get to put any of the final touches on .
As I said, I think they were quite sozzled by the time they got to the cake so maybe it looked straight to them. At Least I know it definitely tasted fucking amazing.
I also have massive imposter syndrome, no matter what I do, but I had to physically start doing something before I went insane. The job market is basically fucked everywhere, and we're all struggling here, thanks to the big orange man.
On that subject, and this is a massive subject change, a lot of people have been asking me if we're ok down here, but we really are. We have been threatened with land expropriation without compensation for decades, but nothing has ever materialized. I think our government is smart enough to know that a lot of white owned farms and businesses are basically the backbone of the country, even if we're barely the 1% minority. This means, they'd be cutting off their nose to spite their face, so to say, and turning us into another Zimbabwe instead of giving the people what they promised in the 1st place. Homes, running waer, proper toilets' so that toddlers don't wonder into pit toilets and in too many cases, drown. A certain faction of extremists want to turn the country upside down in anger with the ruling party, in anger with the losses they suffered during apartheid, which was horrific, and people are still displaced and homeless. These extremists are much like the Afrikaner extremists who are still angry with the British for the Boer War, and who can blame them. I is the British , after all, who invented concentration camps here. A concept only adopted and refined by the Germans. But Britain did it 1st. Back to modern politics and the political extremists blamed for their influence, So called "Afrikaner Genocide" or "farm Murders" are another example of stories being blown out of proportion to feed propaganda. In order to figure out if something is propaganda related, one simply needs to ask - who does this video/ article/ blog/ post actually serve? Each faction feels like something was stolen from them and they are entitled to have it returned t them. The truth is, there have been thousands of conquerors, over millennia, and no one can possibly give all the land back to everyone who originally owned it. It's a redundant concept.
Generally, just like the rest of the world, the opposing powers that be use the media to divide and conquer. It's been a weapon of war for 100s of years, since print media was invented and it's designed to make people thing or respond in a certain way by pulling on heartstrings. Naturally, and I am not saying farm murders don't happen at all, but if you zoom out and take a really good look at he county as a whole, things look very different. Considering the crime rate in South Africa, 10's of thousands of people die in similar robberies or gang related violence every day, but receive no media attention. Because it doesn't serve anyone (the powers that be) to focus on the real problem, does it? Here, white people make up the minority demographic of the country, which is a bit of a switcharoo from the rest of the world. It's true that although we make up the minority we hold over 90% of the wealth, which is fucked up for sure. That's why we have BBEE (black empowerment) policies in place to incentivize companies with big tax breaks if they employ non-white citizens into positions of power, among other things. Despite some abuse and misuse of this concept, it has allowed an opportunity for previously disadvantaged people of colour to be represented as equally as possible in the business world. Its not a perfect system, but considering out history, it's necessary. Essentially, this has worked well but people are still traumatized. People are still angry from Apartheid. Hell, people are still angry from the 2nd world war and that's because atrocious periods in history leave scars that hurt generations for decades afterward,
Were coming up on 80 years since the end of WW2, but it never really ended, did it? Anti-Semitism made the whole world reel with utter disgust at what was allowed to happen. And it was the result of many countries "turning a blind eye" or even empathizing with the sentiment, It was the but it was 1930's Germany that took things to a new level. The holocaust was atrocious. To say the least.
It also created a new wave of Zionists tough, that are almost as scary. This is thanks to the Allies, who despite being painted as the heroes of WW2, were also the colonists and slave traders before slavery was abolished in the 1800s. If anyone knows how to dehumanize people its them. The powers that be at the time of the end of WW2 though they could just displace a whole nation and give back "the promised land" to the Jewish people, the countries that "won the war" but continued to fight a cold war on the side (a story for another day I think) gave a portion of land to the displaced European Jewish people, that didn't even belong to them to give away in the 1st place.) Hence the start of the beginning of the war between Israel and Palestine.
honestly, people are just awful. Especially greedy politicians who couldn't give a rats ass about who they send into war, the casualties or the generational trauma. They just care about what will serve them best at the time.
And that is to dehumanize each other. Which is awful.
This is why I prefer to stay away from the media in general because it's exhausting. I'd much rather focus on cake.
We all love cake.
I'm sticking with that, I think. for my own sanity, at least.
And with father's day coming up and my first restaurant and retail orders and samples going out, I will have my hands full of things that make people happy. and that makes me far happier than anything else (except cats and music, of course :p)
@Merenludick's Birthday is also coming up soon and I'd love to try something like this, but using blue. yes, cake. Lets think about that as I try to calm my panties over local and international politics.
As for father's day, I have frozen cupcakes, chocolate and vanilla (all my recipes freeze extremely well), left over from mother's day, so I'll only need to bake a tray of hearts and star biscuits for samples. I'm not killing myself this time and will definitely only bake to order.
People aren't going to just buy from me. I have to build up my name and build a relationship with potential customers, which means packing sample boxes and dropping them off with pricelists. People don't know who on earth I am or that I have 20+ years of experience in the hospitality sector including working in an actual bakery.
It's hard though... and will take money we don't have to invest, but jeesh, we also need to count our blessings hey. I's sure I mentioned it but my big oven died about two years ago and I've been battling horribly with this tiny minikitchen which only fits one layer of cake or one tray of cupcakes/ biscuits at a time.
And then out of no where, donor's that wish to remain anonymous, believed in me enough to buy be a brand new oven. That's got to mean something right? I mean, that's pretty freaking miraculous. So here's to celebrating the wins and learning as we go.
