Gage with his cake and awards

Me with the cake

Dan worked so hard on the backyard I had to throw in a few photos of that! He got all this done in a week.

There have been some positives to not making cakes.  First, I’ve lost over ten pounds and going strong.  I never learned how to make cake and not eat it.  Also cake is so time consuming when I was busy with cakes, I wouldn’t exercise and I would eat crap because I really didn’t feel like cooking.  As I come out of retirement, that’s something that I have to work on.  That being said, “Fat Friday’s” are officially dead.  I’m going to try to focus cake business posts and practicing skills on smaller cakes (that I can take to work for other people to eat).  Hopefully that strategy will help keep the pounds coming off.  Second, I put all of my energy into getting a job and I landed a great one!  I’m working at Georgia State University as the Social Media Ninja.  It is a new position and there is lots of work to be done!

Actually, I was so burnt out on cakes that I made cakes last fall that I didn’t even post to the blog!  Hopefully over the next few weeks I can get my act together and edit the videos of some of those cakes.  As for the cake I’m making right, it is a graduation cake for Dan’s nephew Gage.  We are having a graduation party for him this weekend.  Dan has really gone all out fixing up our backyard.  It looks awesome!  We have a nice little oasis out there to relax in now.

So I’m back!  Hopefully for a long time and I’ll you’ll be getting more cake related post!

Better late than never right?  At least I’m posting it before Valentines day!

Things have been pretty slow on the cake front…I’ve been itching to make another cake soon, but I haven’t had an occasion to do so.  Maybe next week for Valentine’s Day I’ll make a small one.

Enjoy the Christmas Cake and the Cakeisode.

Here is our dessert feast from Thanksgiving!  We tried some new techniques on this cake.  Some worked and some didn’t…see it all in the video!

The flavors are:

Ginger Snap Cake with Pumpkin Cheesecake Filling

Lemon yogurt Cake with Apple Compote Filling

Pecan Pound Cake with Pecan Pie Filling

This cake was so much fun to make.  The birthday girl was VERY specific on everything from the design to the flavors.  The bottom tier is marble, the middle chocolate and the top golden vanilla.  The design is not my own.  They gave me a photo from a cake shop in Tacoma, WA called Celebrity Cake Studio.  The birthday girl and all her friends really loved the cake.  I wish I had my camera with me when I dropped it off to them!  Alas,  you’ll just have to listen to us describe it in the cakeisode…

Enjoy!

It was announced yesterday, November 19,2010 that Ace of Cakes on Food Network will be canceled after its 10th season.   For more details on the story you can read this article.

I was so sad to hear this news.  The article says that Food Network is not dropping Duff, just the show.  So hopefully there is something even better in store for us.  I just feel like Ace of Cakes is the best cake show out there.  They don’t create drama, purposefully drop cakes, or scream at each other for the cameras.  They just make really cool cakes.  Charm City looks like one of the best places to work.  I am not just saying that because I am a cake person.  Duff has really created a great environment where is employees can grow and test their boundaries in their craft.  That is something that can transcend beyond cakes and just makes Duff a good boss.  If Duff wanted to move on from cakes he could write a book or give small business seminars on work place dynamics.

I guess the one thing that I don’t like about Charm City Cakes is that they very quickly turn to non-edible items before exhausting all edible possibilities.  At least the editing makes it seam that way.  But they make people happy and the cakes look awesome!

Well I am sad that we won’t get to see the daily happenings of Charm City Cakes anymore but hopefully Food Network won’t let us down.  Please give us something with Duff that is even better!

What exactly is a mission statement?

The most important part of the business plan is your mission statement.  The mission statement is going to set the tone for every decision  your business makes!  It is a brief statement that completely sums up your business,  and what makes it unique.  I can not stress enough the importance of the mission statement, and it should not be taken lightly.  This is not an area of your business plan that will come easily and you should be spending a great deal of time making sure the wording of the mission statement is precise.

Why?  If you’re reading this your probably looking to start a cake business or a bakery, so why can’t your mission statement just say something like “to make really great tasting cakes that are beautiful.”  If you are starting a cake business, yeah I hope you make beautiful and tasty cakes, but a mission statement like that is not original and is not going to help your business make long term decisions.

Let’s look a a few examples of some really great mission statements:

Google:

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Stephen R. Covey’s Mission Statement:
To inspire, lift and provide tools for change and growth of individuals and organizations throughout the world to significantly increase their performance capability in order to achieve worthwhile purposes through understanding and living principle-centered leadership.

Facebook:

Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world  more open and connected.

What do these mission statements have in common?    They are specific to their organization’s core values, but they don’t have to outline every detail of what they do.  Try to focus on wording that gives you room to grow but defines how unique your business is.  Whenever a decision needs to be made you should be able to look to your mission statement and ask “does this fit with our mission?”  If the answer is “no” than that decision is made.

Take a lot of time on this part of your business plan.  It will pay off in the end!

Next Tuesday – Vision

How did we come to this decision?  A business plan!  I know there are a lot of other cake artist out there who want to  turn their passion into their career but aren’t sure how to go about doing it. The first step is a business plan.  It will force you to think of all the logistics involved in your endeavor.  A new business is hard enough to run and most of them fail.  Jumping into it without a business plan is a sure fire way for that to happen.

A business plan isn’t as scary as you might think.  We spent several weeks putting one together for Sweetie Cakes & Pies only to realize that now wasn’t the best time for us to do this.  Hopefully there will be a time in the future that it will be possible.  Without this essential tool we would have been heading down a road to failure.  So no other cake artist faces this, we will be posting business planning tips on this web page once a week.  Check back every Tuesday.  I hope that it will inspire other artist to take the business side of their creations to the next level.

Check back next Tuesday for Mission and Vision!

Last month was my birthday!  So this post is a little over due, but worth the wait!  Dan made me a cake that looked like a Mini Coop, my dream car.  He customized it to my liking, hot pink, white racing strips, and a ladybug on top.  He did the cake completely on his own and it turned out awesome.  So good, we made it into a two part Cakeisode.  The first part is for all the bakers out there.  If you love to bake and are looking for some tips on the how to achieve a light, fluffy cake, check out Dan’s tips.  The second part is a more classic cakeisode that focuses on the design and decorations of the cake.

The cake was yellow pound cake with strawberry buttercream filling.
Enjoy the photos and videos!!!