It's February and nothing cures the blues of a dreary winter's day than something bright and colorful. Especially when it also tastes good. That is exactly what this one was intended to do for a 21st birthday. And it certainly brightened our day yesterday.
You say potato...
I would like to start teaching people the proper names of colors. No problem with red, although there is "crimson" which is darker than, say, fire engine red. But what about fuschia. Is that red or pink? And don't even get me started with the many other shades of pink.
You would be amazed at how specific people get with colors on cakes. We are often brought samples of invitations, napkins and wrapping paper to match colors. Not to mention swatches from bridal shops and even paint chips. We do a pretty darned good job.
Except yesterday. We had a cake order with a sample invitation attached. However, the customer said the green on the invitation was not the same as the green she wanted (she wanted 'lime' which had more yellow). And the blue she wanted was more "greenish" than the light blue on the invite. Not 'Tiffany' blue but maybe more of a dark aqua/teal. So I wrote "turquoise" on the order and thought no more of it until we started icing the cake. Hindsight being 20/20, I wonder why she brought the invitation at all.
We don't have "turquoise" gel color in a bottle, but we do have "teal." When I mixed it up, I thought that maybe it was a little too greenish, so I called the customer to ask her. Did she want to come down and take a look before I iced her three tier cake. (The last thing I wanted to do was ice that cake twice).
"The color we are using for the decorations is teal."
"OK then, teal is exactly the color we have. I thought it might be a little too green because I had written 'turquoise'."
"I am sure it will be fine."
Well, it WASN'T fine. I could tell from the frown on her face when she arrived to pick up the cake. "I thought you said it was teal, this is 'Kelly green'."
I assure you that 'teal' is not even close to 'Kelly green' but there was no point arguing with her and to make a very long story short, we ended up delivering the cake to the restaurant that evening (at our expense) in order to give us time to completely re-ice the cake and make the customer happy. She left us one of her place cards so we could match the color. We used 100% sky blue. I hope all the guests notice that the cake color matches the place cards EXACTLY.
I would post a photo of both versions of the cake, but we were too pissed off to take a photo of the first version before we started scraping the icing off, and I forgot to bring my camera with me to the restaurant to snap a photo of round two.
Oh! what a beautiful cake? Looks so yummy! Wish I can also taste it. Anyway, I'm been looking for topics as interesting as this. Looking forward to your next post.
-megan-
Posted by: Red Ribbon Bakeshop | November 08, 2009 at 09:03 PM
It's looks delicious but its much better if it use for decoration only.
-Ava
Posted by: Red Ribbon Bakeshop | February 18, 2009 at 01:01 AM
Kate like this cake, can we have one please?
Posted by: Susanna | February 14, 2009 at 02:53 PM