Getting on the Cake Train

So hopefully by now you have all heard something about our new Cake Vibe.  In a nutshell, the happy ninjas at the bakery gladly bake, fill and frost cakes.  No problem!  We have simplified our sizes to increase efficiency.  What we really did change was our approach to cake decorating.

If you saw our website 6 months ago, you would have found hundreds of pictures of elaborately decorated cakes, sculpted into all sorts of outrageous shapes, or topsy turvy or sheet cakes, bedecked with colored fondant.  After much soul-searching and research, we gave all of that up.  We like to make (& eat) delicious cake and silky smooth – not too sweet – buttercream.  And that’s what cake should be about.

The newly emerging research about the negative effects of artificial food color only justifies our new approach.  We’re actively pursuing alternatives to the fake colors, and having limited success.  The quest continues…  In the meantime, I wanted to give everyone an update.

1. Taking cake orders is much simpler, efficient and enjoyable than before.  We have lots of decorations “in house” that people can choose from.  But the sky isn’t the limit anymore.  Having the structure and lower cost of the 2 and 3 tier cakes seems to encourage people to keep it simple.
2. For customers who want a cake shaped like a boat, or topped with a sculpted Minnie Mouse, we recommend that they contact Christopher Garran’s Let Them Eat Cake or Cinderella Cakes.   We’re not telling them to shove off, just trying to direct them toward a business that specializes in the level of elaborate design that they’re seeking.
3. Weekends are more family friendly.  Plus, I get to attend the Irvine Farmers Market and chat with our customers, which is always good.
4. We don’t have to order buckets of fondant and jars of artificial food coloring.  Hooray!
5. People who order the cakes now seem to appreciate the cake for its flavor, texture and all natural ingredients.  I handed out samples of cake and buttercream at an event at NapaStyle (Costa Mesa) last Thursday, and received an overwhelmingly positive response.  Viva la Cake!
6. Customers can opt for a simple buttercream cake to personalize themselves.  Although some customers seem to feel intimidated by the options, other embrace the creativity.  Hopefully that will expand over time.
7. The percentage of our earnings from cake has gone down (as the new cakes are less expensive) but we’re expanding our wholesale business – including having tarts, savory strata, bars, etc at Keán Coffee.

So, that’s the story from my perspective.   Please let us know your impressions and feedback.

Cake On!

Tags: blackmarket bakery, buttercream, Cake Decor, diy cake, fondant, from scratch, natural food color

Cake Blog Round-Up

Several weeks ago, I invited an illustrious group of So Cal food bloggers to the bakery to test our new Cake Format and Concept.  Each team was given a two-tiered cake – our standard size now – and an assortment of decorating options – from fondant to chocolate shavings, from buttercream in piping bags to sugar flowers.  My insidious goal was to see what they would come up with, how easy or difficult a time they would have adding decor to the cake.  They asked questions, requested decor items that I didn’t have, pushed aside options that I thought would be popular and, overall, shared their feedback generously.  Here is an encapsulation of their posts.  Thanks for playing the part of cake “guinea pigs” for an evening!!

Shelly, from Nibbles of Tidbits

Quyen, from Kitchen Runway

Todd, from Ruth & Todd

Anne, from Orange Coast Magazine

Priscilla, from She’s Cookin’

Josie, from Daydreamer Desserts

Here’s a compilation of some of their alluring images from the night…

New Cake Vibe…

We’re talking cake, sampling cake, baking cake and generally indulging in all things cake.  That goes from what’s inside to what’s outside.  So, after baking our cakes from scratch with butter, sugar, flour (unbleached), eggs and all that natural stuff, I’m becoming less inclined to cover the outside with anything other than Italian Meringue Buttercream.  Now, I know that people like the look of the smooth, rolled fondant.  I like that look too… But between the rising price of fondant, the overly sweet taste and the “too long” ingredient list, we are trying to get away from that type of decorating.

Most of you have already heard or read about our new cake focus, and for that, I thank you.  But it seems as if some potential customers still expect our bakery to churn out elaborate cakes like Cinderella, Let Them Eat Cake, Rockwell’s or even the Cake Boss’s place.  You are wondering where I’m going with this.  Well, we had an open house 2 weeks ago at the bakery.  The focus was on, what else, cake.  Our skeleton crew of staff and volunteers made and passed out samples of our chocolate cake with caramel buttercream and our vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream.  I admit that there wasn’t a buffet table full of treats, but we tried our darndest to tray pass samples to everyone.  Plus we had lots of baked goods in stock – from croissants to tarts, from marshmallows to shortbread – for purchase and for Groupon redeemers.

Do I sound defensive?  You’re still wondering where the meat of this post is.  Well, here goes.  Someone who attended our super-busy open house, at the peak of the rush, wrote the following comment on OC Weekly’s Stick a Fork in It blog about our event and something very similar on Yelp (with a low review).  I saw the blog post first and fumed for a while then the Yelp review was brought to my attention and I have to say something.  So here’s the person’s post -

“2/12/2011
I am having a birthday dinner and saw Blackmarket Bakery being advertised in conjunction with another business that I frequent, and that’s how I found out about Blackmarket Bakery and the open house. I need a birthday cake.

Long story short, the staff members in the back were content to stay in the back and deflect questions. The cashier is doing her job. And the only person available to place an order with or find out what I’m looking for was the owner. In the end, the owner states they dont do creative cakes anymore, it’s the tiered cakes now. There were no samples on hand as advertised, I don’t know if all the freebie people ate it. And the owner had no time to take an order because the OC weekly writer had just arrived and she is more important because it’s marketing. I stood there with my sample for awhile, ignored, I dont know how I was supposed to eat it and it was gooey, and nobody wanted to take a cake order, so I asked the cashier would it be better to place an order for a cake at a later time? The cashier thought that was a good idea, and quickly went to do something behind the register, without asking for my contact information so we could get this done. I set my cake sample down and left.

Cakes is a competitive market, everyone is making cakes – creative cakes. So when you get someone in your store ready to order, you take the order, that’s what the promotion is for. Have more people on the floor to handle questions being asked, or more importantly, to complete the orders and accept payment for them. You’re going to have every jane and joe in there looking for a freebie, but I think the goal is to bring in business and take cake orders; jane and joe complaining that the coffee pot is out of free coffee isn’t bring in money. My suggestion is to hire temporary people for these kinds of promotions that are sales oriented and people friendly, and that are ready to take cake orders; people that act like they don’t want to talk to you isn’t good.”

I just have to respond.  One, no one was hiding in the back or ignoring this person – we were just hustling to get product and samples out.  Two, if you have a problem with a business, you could easily speak to the owner (me) at a calmer moment.  Three, this person’s evaluation of us was based on probably the single most busy couple of hours in our 6 years of business – it is not usually like that.  And (most importantly) four, the attitude of this person, between the pettiness of complaining about us serving free coffee to every “jane and joe” and the need to have a sit-down formal cake consulting, is the embodiment of the main reason we are no longer doing custom cakes.  Getting away from artificial food coloring and fondant is the other.

There is a ton more that I could blather on about, but the bottom line is this – customers who care about flavor and quality are the ones that we are working to please.  Those that need elaborate designs and can’t understand the challenges of operating a small business are obviously those that we can’t make happy, no matter what we do.  In the end, I believe that this person would never have been a satisfied customer of ours anyway, even if we had pulled out all the stops.  Is that being negative?  Or pragmatic?

Or is our sassy attitude too sassy and pervasive to the detriment of the business itself?

From this:

 

To this:

 

Tags: cake, cake decorating, food color, yelp reviews

Four Months is Up

So, how did it go?  Are you guys laughing at me or laughing with me?

If you haven’t been following, I’ll give you the scoop.  We partnered with Groupon in offering a coupon for $20 worth of product, for which the customer only paid $9.  The offer went out on October 7th – for only one day – and 1450 were sold.  Honestly, we were overwhelmed by the response.  Being a small business, in an “out of the way” location like Sky Park Circle, we didn’t know if we would even get 3 or 4 hundred.  The tricky thing about Groupon customers, obviously not all, but some of them at least, are bargain hunters.  We had lots of our loyal customers purchase the Groupon as well, but there were also loads of new people who came through our orbit – between October  and February – some who seemed to know what to expect when they walked in and others that were surprised or confused.  Perhaps our wacky vibe jolted their expectations of donuts, bagels and other bakery staples.  Toward the date of the Groupon expiration, piles of customers called with “… so, I have this Groupon…”  Meanwhile, the staff and I were ordering extra butter and chocolate and turning out loads of tarts, croissants, marshmallows, etc.  Once we turned around, our baked goods and confections seemed to be gone in a flash.

So, the question is, how many new visitors – Groupon’ers – will become return customers?  And will the deep discount of all the product “sold” to the Groupon holders eventually be offset by return business of enough of those Groupon holders?  The deal with Groupon is probably not something that they want to be public knowledge, but the purchase price that the customer pays for the coupon is split equally by the company and Groupon – so for the customers $20 worth of product, the bakery received $4.50.  How does one calculate the metrics of the cost/benefit analysis on the Groupon equation?

We’ve heard rumors and murmurs of businesses, specifically restaurants, who have had negative consequences from offering a Groupon.  A recent example in the LA restaurant press is The Point, in Culver City.  I haven’t visited this place and have no knowledge of their menu, service, etc.  According to articles, the owner did not approve the deal and felt overrun by the Groupon customers, to the point that they stopped accepting the Groupon before the expiration date.  Remember, this is all 3rd hand knowledge, so who’s to say what happened behind the scenes?  I do see how restaurants with table service might have a problem with customers who tip on the discounted total – that would tend to generate animosity toward the Groupon customers in the eyes of the staff.

Just a quick rundown of our experience…. overall very good.  We met many new faces, who seemed genuinely happy to have heard about Blackmarket Bakery and be able to try our pastries at a discount.  I will report back in 6 to 8 months on the long term effects.  And I would love to hear any feedback you have on your experience with this phenomenon.  Many thanks and we hope you stop by (again)!

Tags: blackmarket bakery, discount, groupon, pastries

Winter Pruning

During my year in culinary school in Saint Helena, my family and I ended up living in a 1940′s tract house in Calistoga.  Around the backyard, we found lots of overgrown vegetation – some of it identifiable as fruit trees and then lots of mystery plants.  We weren’t expert gardeners, but, during my house-painting phase,  we decided to trim back this mass of vines that had been twined around a drainage pipe.  The leaves we pruned, back to the stalk.

Here we were, thinking that we were helping the plant to get rid of the excess so that it would rejuvenate in the coming season.  Then as the season changed, I could only wonder, did we cut too much?  Did we murder the vine? Seeing those bare stalks really made us nervous.  Getting rid of the dead weight seems so important, but it takes time to know whether you’ve killed or saved the patient. For the vine, the change proved positive, with picture-perfect leaves and even petite white grapes as the payoff.

Well, the past month has been an effort in pruning of another sort.  At the bakery, we’ve assessed and reassessed what we do well, what is enjoyable, what is profitable and what needs to be changed.  Our efforts to trim the business may be “cutting too much” or may be “just what the plant needs” to reach optimum health and growth.  Unfortunately we won’t know which way the verdict will fall until later – months from now.

***************************

At what point do you ask yourself, am I doing something because I actually want to or because momentum is carrying me on?  Usually this applies to major life decision – did I marry the right person?  did I choose the best career? – not to “did I decorate this cake properly?”.  It may seem piffle to other people, but critical to me.  The cultural swing over the last several years toward more elaborate desserts manifested itself in shows such as “The Cake Boss”, “Ace of Cakes”, “Super Sweet 16″ and “Top This Party”, just to name a few.  And being owner of a small business, I found myself playing in to this to please our customers.

Now I don’t think that I’m alone in the belief that stress is the enemy of goodness.  Any chef or home cook knows that the key to excellent cuisine is allowing naturally excellent ingredients to express their true essence.  Our work then is to remember that no matter how much you sculpt food into towers or cover plates with pithy painterly sayings for the sake of kitsch, that unless the food is allowed to express its true nature, it can fall flat.

We are applying that attitude to cake and where our talents lie.  As much as we’ve come to be known as a bakery that churns out wacky, complex sculpted cakes, in 2011, we are opting to minimize food color, fondant, stress and cost by adopting a new cake structure.

If you’ve seen our website recently, you will notice a big difference in relation to the custom cakes.  Gone are the pictures of fondant-laden airplanes, dinosaurs and presents.  Instead we are choosing to re-embrace our logo and the motto “flavor will prevail” by offering perky 2-tier and 3-tier cakes with streamlined pricing and decor.  Cakes want to be delicious, precious and affordable, but I’m coming to the conclusion that they don’t want to be covered in artificial colors and flavors.  In fact, in the next few weeks, we will be shifting all of our colorants to naturally derived alternatives.

In addition to our basic cakes, you will also be able to find an array of cake decorating options in our shop – from fondant to gumpaste roses, from candles to sugar skulls.  That way you will have a multitude of cake decorating options at your fingertips.  Not feeling crafty?  Pick up some berries or flowers or ribbon at the grocery store and festoon your own cake.  This option may not work for some, who want the “spare no expense” super-elaborate cake as a centerpiece, but we will be happy to recommend some local bakeries that cater to that clientele.  The question is, will people be willing to embrace the simplified cake offerings and hopefully enjoy the part of cake-making that can be quite fun  – the actual decorating?

The verdict is uncertain, so all we can do is throw our ideas out there and hone our concept as we receive customer feedback.  I’ve already heard both positive and negative reactions to our new cake mantra.

” what a cool idea!” -  “so you don’t do custom decor anymore?” -  “i’m not artistic.”  -  “that’s all it would cost for a three-tier wedding cake?”

As this develops, I would appreciate your constructive input – on the cakes themselves, on the “decorate it yourself” concept, on our decorating options, on our online ordering.  At the end of the day, we want to feel good about what we’re offering to our customers, in terms of value, quality, variety and health.  From this paring back, we hope can come healthy growth.

Please visit blackmarketbakery.com for more information.

Tags: Cake Decor, cakes, change, fondant, pruning, small business

Winter in January

<Our new DIY Cake Concept is in the final planning stages… containers found, recipes tested, decorating goodies on the way.  So, in the meantime, let me blather on about cool chickens, ok?>

Tales from the Farm Show… part 1

Me by Temple Grandin's Squeeze Machine

Take it from a gal who’s lived in California for umpteen years… winter is cold.  And snow is fluffy and crunchy.  Sounds logical, I suppose, but the still white of snow-covered fields and branches is amazing.  After spending 5 days in Pennsylvania’s state capital, Harrisburg, I have a new-found appreciation for cold.

The reason for my visit was three-fold… to have a vacation, to visit relatives and to attend the State Farm Show.  According to the Farm Show literature, 1 in 7 residents of Pennsylvania work in the agricultural industry.  Produce, livestock and draft horses are taken very seriously here.

Let’s take chickens, for instance.  Just think of the classic red rooster or white hen, the archetypal “chicken”.  That’s it, you think.  But no, after walking down row upon row of double-decker cages, I can safely say that there are 100′s of varieties.  I love the diversity.  Although I’m no expert at poultry identification, I’ve assembled an assortment of pictures highlighting some of the more wacky ones.  For several years, we owned a small flock of chickens – Barred Rock, Rhode Island Red, Aracauna – when we lived in Los Osos, and I credit them with a pivotal role in my evolution as a baker.  I would toss out my bread and dessert mishaps (and there were quite a lot) to the always hungry poultry and they would reward my efforts with fresh eggs to try another recipe.

We called these chickens Bantams with Barbie Legs… they look almost like mini-velociraptors.

Then on the other end of the spectrum are these super fluffy Cochins, looking like decked-out Samurai, complete with leg feathers.

There were a slew of these guys…  This guy is notable for the feather pattern and leg feathers but may not be a Cochin…

We also found chickens with feathers all over their heads a la Phyllis Diller on Laugh-In – called Polish.

Moving on, we found these wacky chickens with super silky feathers (hence the name, Silkies) or with frizzled feathers like they lost a fight with the curling iron.

Some of the roosters had weird-looking blobby combs…

I ended up taking close to 100 pictures in the chicken area, so I’m trying to be restrained in my enthusiasm.  But, here are a few more of our favorites….

Tags: Fancy chickens, farm show, pennsylvania

DIY Cake Decor – The Beginnings

So, here we are. A bakery that’s been known for making outrageous, elaborate decorated cakes for years. And instead of building upon and encouraging that end of the business, we’ve been trying to tamp it down and are now attempting to steer it into a totally different direction.

Two years ago, after a double whammy of two difficult “mothers of brides”, I decided to stop doing wedding cakes. We let them squeak through occasionally, especially if we knew the people involved. Between the negotiating time, tastings, deciding on design, meeting with wedding coordinators, etc and actually making and delivering the cake, I personally decided that I would rather spend my weekends on less lucrative but more enjoyable pursuits. With weddings in particular, the cake seemed to be less about “fun” and “flavor” and more about image, extravagance and drama. I’m not dissing weddings… in fact, I’ve been married almost 20 years and we did have a cake at our wedding – something simple and delicious because it was, after all, a cake.

So, we are totally overhauling our website’s Cake page.  All of the elaborately decorated cakes are gone.  Really gone.  What will be uploaded tomrrow is a set of simple diagrams describing the filling & flavor of each cake.  Because that’s what we want to focus on and emphasize… FLAVOR.

The cake flavors and sizes are now streamlined.  We offer a 2-tier round that will feed 16 – 22 people.  You can add a lower tier (of a different flavor, if desired) which would give you a 3-tier round to feed about 40.  That’s it. Having a bigger party?  Then order multiple cakes.  The reason for simplifying the sizing is that we can be more efficient and actually bring the price down across the board.  That is, if you are willing to add the elaborate decoration yourself.

We’re in the process of ordering lots of fun edibles for you to add to your cakes… fondant, sugar flowers, sanding sugar, pearl dragees and more.  Would love to hear your suggestions and feedback!

Tags: Cake Decor, fondant, negotiating, wedding cakes

Get Ready for Cake-dependence Day

First, let me start out by saying, emphatically, that we love cake here at Blackmarket Bakery.  Really.  We like making cake, eating cake, teaching people how to make cake, assembling cake and all the other fun stuff along those lines.  What I’m going to say next may be shocking, so get ready.

We want our customers to decorate their own cakes.

We will teach you.  We will be stocked with sugar flowers, fondant, food colors, piping bags, chocolate shavings, sanding sugars & all manner of wacky edible goodies for YOU to put on your cakes.  But, we won’t be decorating the cake, you will.  And, we hope, it will be more affordable and more fun for you.

The hardest part of cake decorating – other than coming up with a good idea – is all the preliminary work to get the cake ready.  That involves baking, making buttercream, assembling, crumb coating and ending up with a smooth, pristine final buttercream coat.  That’s the part that we will take care of.  When you order a cake starting in January, you will get a blank canvas, ready for whatever you want.  In addition, we’ll have online cake ordering set up, to make it that much easier.

That’s why we say… cake of the people, by the people and for the people.

Are you ready?

Tags: Cake Decor

Gingerbread Constructions…

Jump Drive

Taco Bell

School Bus

First, the recipe.  This gingerbread dough is particularly suited for rolling out and making into sturdy houses, trees, etc.  It is certainly edible, but not as tasty as a classic Gingersnap if you are looking for a cookie.  The original recipe hails from Bo Friberg’s The Professional Pastry Chef, which we used briefly as a recipe source in Culinary School.

Ingredients:

15 oz unsalted butter

15 oz granulated sugar

1 1/2 C corn syrup (18 oz by weight)

3/4 C milk

3 lbs bread flour

1 Tbsp baking soda

4 Tbsp ground cinnamon

2 Tbsp ground cloves

2 Tbsp ground ginger

1. Place the butter, sugar, corn syrup and milk in a saucepan.  Heat to about 110 degrees, stirring the mixture into a smooth paste at the same time.
2. Sift the flour, baking soda, and spices together.  Incorporate into the butter mixture.
3. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper.  Dust the paper with flour and place the dough on top.  Flatten the dough, then refrigerate, covered, overnight.
4. Roll out a chunk of dough at a time to between 1/4″ and 1/8″ thick, depending on the architectural function.  Keep the dough that you are not working with in the refrigerator.  The dough will feel a bit sticky, but do not be tempted to mix in additional flour.  The flour used in rolling the dough will be enough and too much flour will make the baked dough too hard.

Create a cardboard template for each piece of gingerbread dough for your project.  Roll out the dough, cut each piece then bake at 350 F until the dough feels firm and has browned somewhat.  If you under bake the dough a bit, the pieces can actually be cut with a hacksaw or trimmed down with a micro-plane.  Test out the fit of your pieces before you assemble, so that you can make any adjustments to size and fit beforehand.

To assemble the pieces, use royal icing made from 1 pound, 4 ounces sifted powdered sugar mixed with 1/2 C egg whites.  Beat in a mixer with a whisk and adjust the consistency as needed so that the icing is thick enough not to drip or run.  We used disposable piping bags to apply the royal icing to the adhering edges of our constructions.

Let your architectural pieces set up once they are all together at least overnight before you start adding all of the details.  We limited ourselves to only edible decor, finding most of it at the candy section of the local drugstore.

See these up close and personal at the Discovery Science Center!  Next up… a Gingerbread Trailer.

Tags: blackmarket bakery, discovery science center, gingerbread dough, Gingerbread house

Mixed Messages: Customer Service

The big cake day for the bakery is usually Saturday.  Makes sense given that parties are often planned for weekends.  So, here I was yesterday, hanging out with kids at home, making brunch, when I happened to check my email on my smartphone.  A customer who had picked up a cake on Saturday wrote a glowing “thank you” note – making sure to name the person who had made the cake, because it tasted delicious and looked fabulous – plus he raved about how great our customer service had been.

Then not 2 hours later, I check the email again (should just leave it all unchecked until Monday to have a mental break) and am met with a very angry email.  The subject line was actually titled “Angry”.  Seems someone else who also picked up a cake on Saturday was not happy at all.  She didn’t like the design and said that the cake was “disgusting….” and “ugly” and worse.

The Angry Cake

So my question is, how am I supposed to process these two conflicting pieces of information?  As a business owner, I certainly want everyone we sell to to be satisfied.  Our customers are our bread and butter, literally.  And we will make sure that the unhappy customer receives compensation for her disappointment.

But the irony is that the cake and buttercream that the two emails both mentioned was from the same batch.  The flavor combination’s were different, granted, but the cake itself was mixed and baked by the same person at the same time.  It’s a recipe that we’ve been using for years.  From a chunk of leftover cake (from the same batch), I had put together a cake for the family – coconut buttercream with buttermilk cake & coconut simple syrup.  It tasted perfect…

A Not Angry Cake

So, all I could do was refund the unhappy person and write the happy person a “thank you note”, thanking them for their positive feedback.  I shared the good and bad feedback with the staff, hoping that we will figure out where the discrepancy lies.  Such diverse responses to the same product make me wary about continuing on with the cake end of the business at all….

Tags: angry, cake, customer service, negative comments, positive comments