THE LEARNING CURVES
Jackie learned her skills by trial and error, and in the early days there was a fair bit of error. She'd often devise grandiose cooking projects without much forethought.
"I decided to bake a cake in the shape of a brownstone building for a real estate agency's anniversary party. Naturally, I'd never done anything like it before. I thought, I'll just cook a series of sponge cakes, four flavors, three layers of each and stack them on top of each other. Simple. Then I'll sculpt a sugar paste façade and secure it to the front of my building. Easy."
Physics (which she initially failed in high school) came into play.

"I found that 12 individually baked cakes are not square and they are not solid so you can't just stack them. I never even considered supports. And gravity had its own ideas about the horizontal placement of the façade. I was crushed."
Exhausted, late, faced with a kitchen embalmed with flour and sugar and frustrated by her realization that it was never going to happen the way she pictured it, Jackie broke down and cried. This was a theme of the early days. Then she snapped out of it and exercised her emerging damage control skills. She assembled just half the building and laid the façade on top, serving the rest of the cake on the side. They absolutely loved It! This, too, was a theme of the early days.
Next Page - Bright Lights, Big Kitchens or click on headings below

about us : learning curves