Written by: Alexus Lowe
I’ve been working at an ice cream shop for roughly two years now. When I first started the fall of my freshman year, I remember being constantly asked by customers: “When are you guys going to start back selling cakes?”. The answer at the time was “We aren’t sure.” In all honesty, I didn’t even know what cakes they were talking about. That’s how long the shop hadn’t been selling them.
However, recently, our ice cream cakes have made a comeback for the Valentine’s Day Holiday. When we first started the prep, I was stuck packing ice cream and fudge into a pan and freezing them, which wasn’t much fun. So, I managed to weasel my way onto the cake-making team.
Because of the cold weather, there wasn’t a steady flow of customers, my focus could be used elsewhere.
Growing up, I watched one of my sisters study to become a pastry chef. I watched her bake all sorts of cakes, pies, and other amazing desserts, and I watched her work with icing and decorating cakes. My initial thought when seeing the cake ideas we were going to be working with was, ‘this is easy peasy’. Boy, did I underestimate the amount of time and effort that had to be put into these cakes.
Most people think that making ice cream cakes is super easy. You just slap some icing onto it and pipe some decorations on and you’ve got a beautiful cake.
No. Not at all.
There was a lot of experimenting with frosting with food coloring. The one thing we didn’t expect was that if you put just a little too much food coloring in, the entire bucket starts to taste like chemicals. I also learned that red 40 easily stains skin and fabric… even when watered down. After a few dozen poor batches, we finally got all the frosting bowls the correct pigments and could set to work.
Putting on the base layer of icing for each cake was probably the most stressful part of the process. I had to run back and forth between the deep freezers and the back counters, praying none of my coworkers would turn the corners blindly and crash into me, so the cakes wouldn’t melt and mess up the frosting.
Then after base layers were done and the colored frosting was ready, came the fun part: decorating! Some of the cakes had easy decorations of just a border and some small hearts on top, while others had a vibrant rose design which required a certain amount of wrist mobility to get the perfect shape. One of our best sellers was our cake that said ‘bee mine’ with a little bee which was very fun to make.
Image taken by Alexus Lowe
Now that February is over, we’re working on Easter cakes and I’ve been put fully in charge of creating prototypes for everyone on the cake making team to go off of. The whole process has been very fun and exciting but has also given me a newly found appreciation for the culinary arts.