How many of you have ever wished you could be Buddy Valastro from Cake Boss? If not, how many have enjoyed watching his team decorate and deliver the cakes? I fall into the category of those who wish to be him. I am fascinated by how in such little time, he is able to come up with an idea and just create beautiful artworks out of cake. I have had a little past experience in decorating as I got a decorating book for my birthday and have made a few cakes for special occasions within my family. My favorite being the pigs in a blanket cake I made for my cousin’s 11th birthday. That is why I am investing the 20% of my time into cake decorating. Other reasons include how the slow and tedious process may lead to decreased level of stress and anxiety, which most people can relate to. And the best part, you end with a spectacular and delicious treat to eat! So by developing my cake decorating skills, I can find a healthy activity to relieve my anxiety.
To lay it all out, in cycle 1, I will start with the basics. I will research basic frosting tips and if cake decorating can actually help me with stress. I will start developing my skill by neatly frosting cupcakes in using the techniques I discovered. Each cupcake will hopefully be able to incorporate a different tip I researched about. Leading into cycle 2, I will find out which tools to use for the actual decorations and will frost a batch or two of cupcakes and each cupcake will incorporate a different pattern or use a different tool for the decorations. Cycle 3 is where I will cross the bridge from cupcakes to cakes to get one step closer to my end goal. I will keep it simple by just researching more complex designs and decorating one cake for that week using the designs. Cycle 4 is where I will start to use and create fondant rather than just using frosting for my decorations. I will strive to decorate a cake that week entirely with fondant and no frosting. Cycle 5 is where I will blend the fondant and the frosting to create 2 fully designed cakes, but by following a recipe and decoration directions for the cakes. And lastly, in week 6 I will reach my end goal by effectively creating my own original decorated cake by culminating all the skills I’ve learned throughout my project. Throughout the whole process, I will put my anxiety and stress levels onto a scale for each blog post to set up a personal experiment to see if the decorating can actually help me.
In the end, I hope to have found a healthy and effective anxiety-relieving activity for me to do. Throughout the process I will also begin to value the importance of focusing on personal goals. I tend to lose my sense of self and focus too much on other people which leads to potential problems. I’ll also be advancing my skills as a cake decorating because I think that’s a pretty cool skill to know just off hand. Like people can come up to you and be like, “what’s one of your passions?” and I’ll be able to answer that question with cake decorating and I’ll get the obvious follow up question, “Will you bake me something?” But either way, I will have a cool skill to be able to flaunt to. I also believe it’s a special and unique skill that will make me different in some kind of way. And I like that feeling.
Sup Jacob, I really liked this blog post in the way that it laid out your process over the next 6 cycles. This will serve as a great resource for you and everyone following your project in understanding the path that you will take to reach your final product. Clearly you have a passion for baking cakes, something that will drive you to work hard on achieving your goal. A lot of people are learning a relatively new skill, so I think it's cool that you are going beyond that and trying to master a skill you already possess.
ReplyDeleteThese pictures are delicious! I like how you include pictures of your own cupcakes. I also like how you mentioned that you might bring in treats for your class. That will surely attract some buzz as your classmates will be eager to get the latest status on how their potential baked goods are coming along. Keep it up, I think you should make a time lapse of cupcakes in an oven. That would be very cool to see the actual baking in action.
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