Oh gosh....is it me or is it a total pain to bake, torte, fill, and cover the cakes with fondant. I hate to do all that before i get my blank canvas to start playing. I feel like that work is totally unappreciated by people that have no idea how much batter their cake took! not to mention the washing of the dishes.
How do you all deal with the dreading of the baking process???

I hear you. I just had to change my attitude and have a mantra in my head "this is going to be fun, this is going to be fun..."

My DH at least helps with the dishes and cleaning which is a help. It has made me want to start pottery or something where you can just buy your "canvas" and don't have to make and mix your own medium. I have often wished I could just buy the cakes perfectly iced or covered and just decorate...but at least I know my cakes taste good.

I used to feel this way, but I don't mind it so much anymore.

What I mind now is the friends who want me to bake their cakes & make their icings (& help with fondant- I make them roll it out) so that they can decorate. I had two friends over on Monday who I did all this for.

I had wanted to decorate a cake myself, but never had time to start one with running back and forth between the two of them and helping them.

(Colored all their fondant for them too).

Once was ok.... they got the idea.... but next time the friends must help with more of the work part!

I love it. The weighing, the mixing, the folding in of ingredients....love it. Scratch baking is something that you either love wholeheartedly or hate. Otherwise, I would think it simpler to dump a bag into the mixing bowl and throw an egg in and call it done.

Now, when I'm on pan 10 of 12 for one dang cake....I am ready to be done. And I don't even have the 2 hours straight of making SMBC started yet. Oi vey.

That's the best part. Remember, people will eat an ugly cake. People won't eat a pretty cake that tastes like crap.

Mike

I totally hate the baking aspect of this business!! Not only the mixing, baking, and of course cleaning, but I hate shopping for all the ingredients and have people comment (wow, that's a lot flour and sugar...you must be planning to bake a lot huh?) and granted I use this as an opportunity to hand out a bus. card (I'm not stupid lol) but I'm usually in a hurry and they always want to know flavors and what kinds of cake do you do, etc. and I keep pointing to the card (look at my website).............but yes I can totally relate to wishing we could just have our blank canvas just waiting.

Although, you do realize that pottery involves warming the clay, throwing the clay (to remove air bubbles) then getting some water ready and of course the pottery wheel.....they're 1,000's of dollars to begin with and then you still have a big ol' mess to clean up when you're done!!!


And I guess with painters too......you don't just buy a canvas and paint on it (I mean I gues you could but they're VERY pricey)...you would no doubt wind up buying fabric, cutting out a frame, staple it to the fram, prepare the canvas with gesso (sp?) and then when it's all dry..........THEN you can paint LOL

lol! I feel youe pain. Baking is exasting but I cant help to think how mutch better home made frostings and fillings taste. The last wedding cake I made was red velvet w/cream cheese filling,carrot cake w/ same filling and choclate cake w/choclate moose there were only 60 gests and they ate it all!Not even a crumb to for the bride to take home. I have to admit it is hard work but it's worth it in the end. Hang in there

I hate that too. The worst part is the big mess I have to clean up afterwards

I don't mind the baking, so much.............I LOVE to smell a fresh baked cake!!!!! It's the cleaning up mess afterward...............from the cake pans to the icing tips..............yuck.....yuck...yuck.....

I love baking; it's my favorite part. I consider putting fondant on part of the decorating. I don't think anyone LIKES that part.

Hmmm, the only time I hated it was when I had my last two cakes in the oven and had like 15 cakes on the table, the table broke, and there went half the cakes. Yup, I hated scratch baking that night. But I LOVE absolutely LOVE seeing the look on people's face when they bite into one of my cakes. I hate clean up.

I don't mind the baking so much - it's the clean-up...but DH is a huge help with that, when he's around while I'm baking he's like an assistant...grabbing stuff from the fridge, throw this out, etc. so I'm able to bang it out fairly quickly, and I've gotten to the point now where I can do it in a pretty short amount of time...
Now, the decorating?? I LOVE!!! That's the fun part, and I 'reward' myself with the fun part only after I've done my baking!
Off to make some yellow stars & a Clone trooper, and a rose, apple, ribbon and chess pieces! Yay!!!

Oh Bella...ouch!!!!

I guess it is a consolation to know that your cake will taste great and that you are in control of what you put in it....but still....I just finished baking a 16 inch tier (two layer)...it took forever!!!! and I gotta do it all over again for the other tiers....i guess is just that this cake is humongous and I'm feeling overwhelmed!.

I love the baking and decorating but I HATE frosting the cakes! It takes me so long to make sure it's smooth and I'm never completely happy with the result. All that Viva and computer paper...Rackin' frackin' (expletive deleted) I'm getting worked up just thinking about it.

It's a love hate relationship. I love it when I bake for me - for fun. If I have a deadline (birthday or a class) I make all sorts of mistakes and messes, and I am tempted just to give it all up. I find I enjoy it more if I am blasting music and keeping some 'happy thoughts' and forget all about why I am making the cake.

Although, frustration may also be due to a diet...which means no cake for me!

I hate the baking part, I used to enjoy it when it was just a dessert cake for my family, but when you add in the pressure of baking for someone else, and the amount at which you have to bake it becomes a chore, at least for me.
I love the decorating part, and everything I do up until I get to start decorating is a pain.

Yup. And I'm not going to discuss how the table broke. And no, it wasn't pound cake. Heck, I wish they would have all been the same flavor.

Blessings

Making the batter and baking doesn't bother me so much. It's the clean-up that I hate ... especially cleaning the tips!!! Uugh!

So those of you that hate baking send me your recipes, and I'll do the baking, and send you back the cakes. Cakes will be baked to your specs with any flavor you dictate.

Mike

At all stages I hate the clean up, I'm a bit (lot) ocd so it takes a while! I'm finding baking so much more stressful now I just want to get on to the decorating bit. I feel so much more in control of the decorating and it's instantly gratifying but the baking is time consuming

I dunno, I think it's a 50/50 thing for me.

Obviously if everything is going right with the cake (how can you tell at the baking phase, huh) then I don't mind.

When things are going wrong, I dread working on it.

I dont mind making, baking, or cleaning really. I think I dread making buttercream more than cake. And I really get all bent up over trying to crumbcoat and get a nice smooth finish. Doing the fondant doesnt bother me much, and I make MMF. I've got it down so good that I can make and roll a giant colored batch in no time, so it really is no biggy. And of course I love the decorating part.

Do you all (that bake at home I guess) bake more than 1 cake pan at a time? Have 2 sets of pans so I can bake 2 at once. Thought about getting 2 more to bake 4 at once, and just do a rotation at the half point of time. Kinda like they do with sourdogh bread. That way the cakes cook somewhat evenly.

I love baking. It's my very favorite part of caking.

I have an employee who fills, crumbs and covers! I have a commercial dishwasher (the program takes 90 seconds). The only thing I wash by hand are my precious ML pans.

I envy you Mensch, both your employee and your dishwasher
My goal is to have an employee who does the baking, torting,filling and crumboat for me, but that is a few years down the road,until then it's just me

I've just hired her full-time, too! She's a great little gal. We have a blast at work.

Darthburn I do bake more then one cake pan at a time, as well as different size cake pans. I rotate around and know how long it takes for a given size to bake. Surprisingly, not a lot of lost of heat. Some, so it takes a little longer to bake, but not much.

Thank you Bella, that is very helpful to know. I figured their would be some trial and error in getting to know how my oven likes it. I think I may go ahead and start tweaking with it!