Fondre

Finally confirmed to take part in the Family Bazaar for last Sunday. As I had booked a space for selling cakes, I prepared myself to spend a hectic Saturday for the whole preparation to happen. T had his day off so he was totally up for helping me out with one extra pair of hands and a smile. And I was so touched he actually cancelled his plan with his friends and chose to be with me instead. I was glad as well that we for the first time had an opportunity to run a three-hour business together and establish a connection away from our routine.



Told T that no matter how busy the whole thing was, we were supposed to take it easy and have a bit of fun. Yeah sure….. but in reality??? Well, it was actually a bit chaotic at the end of Saturday evening because we were both busy with our tasks and due to miscommunication, T unintentionally cut the baked vanilla sponge cake which was supposed to be for Fruity Carousel Cake into something else.



While I found out about it, I freaked out but quickly calmed myself down and dealt with it. Apparently my butter cream was not sufficient to decorate 40 cupcakes and 3 whole cakes. It was late and I didn’t really want to make more butter cream nor another vanilla sponge cake. Therefore I concluded maybe the incident was a blessing in disguise and I should be content with 40 cupcakes and 2 whole cakes, instead of 3.



So those were all we got: 40 chocolate cashew nut cupcakes frosted with vanilla and coffee butter cream, 1 coffee cake covered with coffee butter cream, garnished with almond and kiwi fruit, and 1 chocolate cake covered with vanilla butter cream, topped with longans and pomegranate.



On Sunday morning, we arrived at the empty car park at 11:15 in the morning, set up our counter by combining 2 book shelves, and discovered hat we had to share not-so-big shelter with the neighboring shop. Some of my cake stands were obviously off the sheltered area and directly exposed to the sun. Didn’t really have time to do anything about it since customers started to order cakes and we had to slice them, put them into boxes, and then place the boxes into plastic bags. And on top of that collected money and gave the change. Only about 20 minutes later we realized that our cakes started to melt. We had to do something about it right away!! It was a critical situation. SOS! SOS!!!



I quickly approached one of the organizers and begged to relocate our counter to the shady area right underneath the building. She granted it and without any delay we moved all the things as quickly as we could. And that really helped because the melting stopped and I was hysterical noticing that some parts of the cake decoration were deformed and there was nothing fast enough to salvage that. “Oh God, we have cakes to sell here, help us please!”



Suggested to T that I should just take some of the cakes to the food store nearby and ask for a favor to use their refrigerator briefly. I was desperate, alright? When I was about to do just that, customers started to come non-stop. T stressed that my cakes should stay put right where they were because apparently people were buying regardless of the deformed butter cream frosting. I almost couldn’t believe it.



We were both amazed by it and kept reminding the customers to refrigerate the cake as soon as they arrived home and all! And while we did all that, we never for once forgot to give away name cards! And some people stayed to chat about their prospective needs of cakes for events and birthdays. They were pleased to know that I basically stay in their neighborhood and the delivery would be so convenient. I was glad too.



It ended about 2:30 in the afternoon. We sold 75% of our cakes in less than 3 hours. My coffee kiwi cake sold the fastest. We were happy about it and with a smile in our faces, we concluded that we should be doing this again, maybe somewhere else pretty soon when next opportunity knocked.And next thing in our mind was reaching home as soon as possible and having a nap. It was a good day!