I feel obligated to put a disclaimer here immediately: this will not become a baking blog.
Firstly, unless I suddenly get a lot of orders, I won't be paid to make fancy cakes often enough. Making double layer cakes with frosting isn't exactly economical, after all. And you have to have made a certain number of them before you actually get good at it.
Secondly, for the simple reason that I am not a true fancy cake baker. For now, that is. Something I'd like to do in the future is to work for a while at a bakery and learn how to do those amazing things you see in videos on Instagram feeds. (Speaking of instagram bakers; if you enjoy pretty cakes, or cakes that make you feel like eating cakes--I've realized that the two aren't always the same--check out ivyandstonecake for the first; and for the second, the one who originally kept my interest in baking going, iambaker You won't regret it.
I've been baking a long time, ever since I made my first batch of muffins and put tablespoons instead of teaspoons of salt into them. (they looked delicious, smelt delicious, and had to be thrown away because they were inedible. My family called them the Dead Sea Muffins while I tried not to cry. I'm surprised I still had the nerve to continue baking.)
Besides the innate weakness for beautiful cakes which any sweet tooth has, I also was consistently inspired by the amazing Amanda Rettke, or iambaker. Check this talented woman out if you have any interest in making or eating beautiful cakes!
I was especially fascinated by her hydrangea cake and rose cake! (what am I doing, recommending an expert before I display my own lack of skill...)
This time, a friend ordered a double layer vanilla butter pound cake and asked for buttercream frosting. I've always stayed shy of buttercream, remembering nightmares of oily beaters and a shiveringly sweet mess that used nightmarish amounts of butter and icing sugar--which no one wanted to eat anyway.
This time I took a deep breath and decided I would try to overcome my buttercream trauma. I tried Honeysuckle's buttercream recipe from youtube, as someone recommended, and was delighted with how simple it was (besides the fact that it didn't ask for mountains of butter and icing sugar.)
Somewhere along the way as I watched the creamy mass thicken under the whirling beaters, memories of beautiful naked cake pins I'd seen on Pinterest came floating into my mind. So I took the spatula and the plunge.
It was such a nerve-wracking process, besides the fact that my hands were all over buttercream, that I didn't stop to breathe or take a photo until the cake looked like this.
Here you see the insignificant product of much hard work--I took two recipes of vanilla butter cake out of their tins, sandwiched them together with the buttercream, sliced the edges for that clean line so important for the naked cake look, and scraped the sides artistically (I hope) with frosting as required.
I took a long breath of relief, as well as this photo, and finally put the spatula down to take a good hard look at my work.
The rest of the buttercream went into a new plastic bag, which had an icing tip in one corner. I succumbed to the temptation of an attractively compact icing contraption with a bottle and a set of tips, on sale at Daiso for the magnificent price of $2. However, I hadn't realized that the attractively compact container didn't hold enough frosting for a whole cake, and every time I had to stop to refill it a considerable amount of buttercream got wasted in the process, sticking happily everywhere.
I tried that twice, risking an oily death in buttercream, and then went back to the old basic plastic bag with a corner snipped open. Ah, the lie of technology.
What you see in the picture below took three attempts, what with keeping my hand steady, keeping the pressure and speed consistent, and keeping the loops at the end of each row the same size (which meant having to turn very smoothly at just the right point.)
By this point, I emerged out of the pressure shaken but triumphant. Please, if anyone tells you baking is therapeutic, take it with a pinch of salt. It very much depends on what you bake. Also at which point of the baking process. Looking at the finished product might be, if you don't have shattered nerves at that point and a sinkful of oily beaters and bowls to wash (another reason why I like to clean up as I go.)
This was quite possibly the very first cake I made that I actually quite liked by the time it was done. Of course, if I didn't look too closely. But it was definitely progress.
I'm still at that stage where almost every time I make a cake there's at least one point in the process where I suddenly can't remember why I was keen to do this in the first place, what made me think I could do it, and what magic had drawn me to struggle with greasy buttercream, sticky leaking piping bags, and cake crumbs. What keeps me going has been moments (or to be more precise, cakes) like this; and more importantly, the people who eat the cakes. Seriously. I kid you not--every baker needs people to eat their cakes and affirm them just when they feel insecure and frustrated. In my church family I have the loveliest cake eaters ever, who don't waste a lick of icing and are always genuinely impressed by the cake, even when I want to crawl into a hole looking at it. Somehow. I don't know whether they're very good actors or they just love me too much to be disappointed at any of my attempts...