When Decorators Need to Practice Their Roses
October 1, 2008 When there's a new kid in the bakery, these designs help speed up the on-the-job training:
The "Rose Bush".
(I'm told there's a cake under there...)
The "Rosy Age".
I had to stare at this one for several long seconds before I realized the roses are supposed to spell out the number 20. The cool thing is, though, this cake has a built-in clock: see where the light pink roses meet the darker ones on the 2? That's when the first decorator's shift ended.
(Gotta love that candle placement, too.)
And of course, the "Haven't-Learned-to-Write-with-Icing-Yet".
No room for an inscription = no complaints about messy handwriting! Not to mention there's no chance of spelling errors, random quotation marking, or becoming famous on the 'net for all the wrong reasons.
The best part? The people who ordered the first and last cakes didn't even ask for that many roses. So Kim C. & Jill S., thanks for showing us just how specific we need to be when ordering baked goods. Now we know.
(Everybody together now: "And knowing is half the battle!")
Reader Comments (122)
I thought the 20 looked like 211...
Still seeing a lot of Frosting hare in the comments. Granted there are some SANE posters here that understand cake is only a devise to deliver frosting to ones mouth, but still All you frosting haters, you're on notice! Frosting lovers Unite! Oh and the rose cakes? Love them. They are wrecktacular!
My father was a pastry chef. He made really beautiful roses. They looked like proper roses and not these big gigantic icing ploops.
My mother and I used to go to other bakers, including the ones in the supermarkts, and laugh over the gargantuan cabbages otherwise thought of as roses on these cakes.
People need to learn how to make proper roses! Great call on these cakes!
Chrissy
The top one looks like those old fashioned swim caps with all the flowers!
I really hate a lot of frosting so I would probably gag trying to eat those. That being said, the first one is really pretty to look at :).
These...these are not wrecks. These are glorious and I want one now.
Also I was expecting shapeless "rose" blobs instead of actual icing roses. :(
That birthday cake is so ironic. It has 19 roses! They could't fit a 20th!?
The roses on the third cake make it seem more like a coffin than a cake!
Almost all showy roses are grafted onto rootstock. You could easily graft several different colors onto one rootstock.
Blue roses are a standard of fantasy stories about "True Love" (emphasis deliberate).
If it's good quality icing, yum. Otherwise, too much.
My sister, mother and I always argue over who gets the rose and/or corner piece. (We're frosting fanatics!) So these ROSES cakes would be perfect for us. :-)
When my cousins and I were little, there wold be full on brawls over who got the flowers on the birthday cakes at Nana's house. Flowers = more frosting, of course.
Nana finally got wise and started ordering cakes with extra flowers.
Nana's got nothing on these cakes, though!
As someone who loves cake but hates frosting, these cakes make me cringe.
All icing! No substance! Going for the middle piece won't save me now.
I am also guilty of burying a cake under a mountain of icing.
Cheers
I think the roses looked good on the first cake - not sure about the colour choice, but whatever. The cake as a whole was rather ugly though. And I loved your clock joke on the second cake, LOL!
I wish a guy from my school would give me that cake. Then I'd have a reason to reject him.
I don't get all the frosting whining - the more flowers for the icing nuts, the better. I am someone who prefers the cake to the icing, and just can't eat all that sticky sweetness, but I don't have any guilt about scraping it off. The icing lovers have no such easy solution to a sadly under-iced cake.
Dude, these were probably all made by request. Have you never seen the carnage of a dozen grade-schoolers killing each other over who gets the most frosting? Edge-pieces and rose blooms are in HIGH DEMAND.
if people only knew what bucket buttercream was made of...
william danube
I trained to be a decorator at Dairy Queen, and I actually did have to practice my roses. And practice and practice...but once I'd filled the board and they were critiqued, they'd get scraped off, whipped back up in the mixer (ahhh, Bettercreme) and stuffed back in the piping bag for another go-round.
Gosh . . . wow. . . . um, I mean
thanks for all your trouble, but
I asked for sprinkles.
A-HA! I found one of Haiku Joy's hidden haikus!!! SCORE!!! (Good one, Joy!)
Well-played, KarateLady. Well-played.