Despite dealing with people and their silly drama and people not being professional I have to say I love my city. For better or worse this is home and staying out of the garbage and not slinging mud and not acting like fools will be part of us being successful here. Sometimes we have to make a few phone calls to let them know we're not chumps and won't participate in their idiotic drama but other than that they pretty much leave us alone now one because They get nothing out of us in terms of fighting back or back biting other people and two they really don't have anything that's truthful to say bad about us. I figure if we keep giving our best to our customers minding our own business we don't give them a foot in the door to say any true negative things about us we'll be alright. I figure if all they have are lies that's a blessing. I won't give them something to rip me apart about ever no matter how hard they try. A few ding dongs don't ruin the whole city but I tell you what they sure make me want to pull my hair out sometimes  and for all the ones who go away a whole new batch come to take their place lol. It's about our customers and i refuse to let other idiots ruin it for them!!

How is any of this High School, Queen-Bee, dribble........addressing the purpose of the thread!!!!!!

This.........this thread is BORING. Perhaps you need to start a new thread "Gossip of the Day", " Queen-bee Pow-Wow"?

there I've said it.......

People left, they now belong to private groups, they are in contact with some who have remained here, so stands to reason, they are aware that the site is improving, all be it slowly.

They are not coming back for a number of reasons, that may have nothing to do with CC. In order for CC TO GROW, we need new blood. The real question is ........how to make that happen!!!!!!

@ pastrybaglady Could not help but smile when I saw you pic. lol

IDK ......... I thought I was in the lounge, with my cuppa joe, came here this morning to see what my cake peeps are up to and....... kept reading............now I'm looking around cause I don't know what the heck happened, cause I'm where, they are talking about what......gimme a cake I need to ice something.......quick!!!!!

Awww, we're just whining and having fun at the same time.  Sure, this thread went awry a while back, but it's all good, just cake peeps chatting.  Why should that upset anyone?

Maybe we should start a queen bee club?  "You can call me queen beeee and baby I'll ruuuuuulllleeee"  

The Queen Bee brings order and peace to her kingdom! It's all her daughters who spit honey and wave their stingers around. Ha ha, the imagery!

ok everybody!!

How is the British vote and our stock market crash today going to affect you??   I'm really wondering if I will still have ANY money left next  week ;(  

No money.........LET THEM EAT CAKE!!!!!

Love it @Pastrybaglady ‍ always so wise :) 

I want a crown that says Queen Bee whose with me lol?!?!?

- 

What rhymes with BrExit?

GrexiT

Departugal

Italeave

Fruckoff

Czechout

Oustria

Finish

Slovlong

Latervia

Byelgium…

I feel the pain of many personal friends and rwlatives. Also, stockmarket is bloodbath today

What rhymes with BrExit?

GrexiT

Departugal

Italeave

Fruckoff

Czechout

Oustria

Finish

Slovlong

Latervia

Byelgium…

I feel the pain of many personal friends and rwlatives. Also, stockmarket is bloodbath today

Well, I'll start with a blanket apology to all the newbies out there. I started way back when the Dead Sea was just sick and there was no internet. Yes, there was life before the web.

The first really decorated cake I did was for my daughter's first birthday and it came from a picture in a magazine. (And by the way, this was about the time I realized the world was stupid cause everybody else didn't think my baby was the most wonderful baby ever born.) I was well and truly hooked. I made cakes and tried different things and then started over again and again until I got it right. I didn't know about the cake world online until said daughter was getting married and I had to come up with a design.

Hence my lack of patience with questions that seriously make me think you've never even made a cake and yet you're open for business. I truly try to be nice and some of them I know I shouldn't even attempt to answer. And to my credit, I've only called someone a moron on facebook once.

So I started baking a good 30+ years ago and I was all that and a bag of chips UNTIL I found CC and asked the dumbest question in the history of baking. It was so dumb no one would even think to ask it because I kept searching for an answer and couldn't find anyone else dumb enough to ask before me. Someone answered me simply and curtly and so I learned. I stayed and was amazed at what I just didn't know! I didn't have my ducks in a row. Business just kind of happened to me and CC set me straight on everything from being legal to the evils of undercutting to actual baking and simply doing things better and more efficiently. I try to help with what I know now out of gratitude for what I've received here. During the dark days of Spam and the bugs with the new board I tried other sites, but they were just lacking. I want to hear from the longstanding pros. I think here on CC many have retired and are off enjoying their lives now that they are no longer shackled to the work bench.

What was the question?!?!? I have to know!!! Lol please :) 

Couldn't agree more.

I am enjoying these stories about how you (longstanding pros) got started.

Today I am grateful that A) I a hobby baker who makes things in small batches and B) That I always make things in advance when I can, particularly when I haven't practiced.

Grandma's birthday (91st) next week and she loves cakes with flowers (not my strong point at all lol) so made up some Calla Lilies yesterday, veined, curled and looking lovely. Took them off the molds, assembled with stamens, looked closely and thought Hmmm - why point at the back? ........................ Made Calla Lillies upside down :-(

Haha, time to start over.  Better luck next time Beck.

................enjoying these stories about how you (longstanding pros) got started................

The year: 1980.  Daughter gives us exactly 6 weeks to the day to plan her wedding.  We have NO $$ :(  It's going to be a homemade wedding.   She made her dress.  MIL made bridesmaid dresses.  MIL convinces daughter that she have a homemade cake w/cream cheese icing.  She tells me she has some equipment from yrs back - stored in the barn, Look thru old  Wilton yrbks and we pick out what looked easy to decorate and promises to help me if I bake the cakes.  I end up making a 4 tier cake w/side cakes connected w/bridges.  It's covered in 'squiggles' (cornelli lace) w/fresh violets.  Turns out great.  3 days later someone asks me to make another (very small) wedding cake, then 3 weeks after that another wedding cake was requested.  By this time I discovered how much I enjoyed this and enrolled in Wilton decorating classes.  

That's a great story, its interesting how many bakers started out making cakes for family, especially their children. So your first cake was a wedding cake. Impressive!!!

I think I've seen that cake on here somewhere?

@Jinkies ‍...I have to tell you that I had someone accuse me of copyright infringement recently, and one piece of "evidence" was that I had used the words "cheap cake lady" in what I wrote. I see that you have also used this extremely unusual and never-said-before phrase and I have to tell you to watch your back because she might try to get you too, haha! (She dropped her complaint when she realized that I actually have an attorney who understands intellectual property, by the way.)

On the note of straying threads, that doesn't bother me. I never understand when people try to limit what people post on a thread, things do tend to change topic as a conversation progresses. No biggie. Wander away, it just means that people are chatting.

I personally started doing cakes when I decided that I needed a career change after working with super-disturbed little kids who tried to curse me out all the time. I went to culinary school and got a pastry arts certificate and started a home-based business doing custom wedding cakes because I wanted to do something from home so that I could keep an eye on my own kids. Now after 20 years of that I've transitioned to supplies and gumpaste decorations sales online only. No custom cakes anymore, but I'm going to add some display photo prop cakes to my shop soon so that I can keep decorating something.

i took a free lesson in bread making at a health food type bakery in the early 70's -- then if you can believe this they used volunteers to knead batches of bread they sold so I did that once -- somehow I landed a job as head cook (?) at a place called "the green planet" --

in those days you had to get tb tested so I arrived at the testing place and said as I had been instructed, "I'm from 'the green planet' " and quickly discovered by the shocked looks on the faces that I had the wrong address - lol

so went to Canada worked as a baker -- then back in the states -- rented a school kitchen and sold 'health food' bread -- got the baker job in a boarding school serving hundreds sometimes thousands at a meal -- -- i was giving a friend a tour of my work space and she said, "wow what did you think when they showed you how to do all this stuff " I said, "nobody showed me anything" hahahaha -- people asked me to do their weddings on the side -- got a wilton yearbook -- figured it out -- 

over the next 40+ years worked at many different bakeries and had my own business from home on the side --

retired now due to rheumatoid arthritis that broke out in the past few years but I've had fibro for decades -- I can't part with my equipment -- last week for a baby shower I made a box of onesie 'cupcakes' and a big bouquet of 'rose' diapers -- I felt like a human being again

>heart<

K8 that's what makes you such a great resource!

You always help!

 Hi everyone <wave>

I was active on CC years ago ( I loved the word games in the Lounge, and the Scratch-Off baking threads), but I drifted away when they started to make all the website changes.  I was really upset when they took away the "My Favorite Recipe" option. 

Pinterest also grabbed the spotlight as a place to view amazing cakes (and everything else).  I spend WAY too much time pinning cakes I will never make :-)

But I started getting interesting email from CC so I decided to come back and see what was going on…

I have noticed that no one ever comments on pictures very much anymore.  When I first started on CC people always posted comments and often questions (about techniques, structure, etc.).  I used to learn so much about designs and new, different techniques, just from interacting with the cake artist who published the photo.  Plus, it is always nice to hear thoughts, sometimes critiques and suggestions on how to improve or different ways of doing things.  Just my 2 cents.

Wow K8 what a wonderful journey you have been on. And so you continue to share your wealth of knowledge.

@moreCakePlz  Glad you are back!!!!!  Yes I confess, I too spend way too much time on Pinterest. Maybe they can resurrect some of the things you mentioned.

Hi @moreCakePlz ‍ Welcome back and please hang around!

Totally agree with @ljdills ‍ , People don't really post on pics here and when I have posted on them, I usually don't get a response. Sometimes it's hard to have interaction. In fact someone used to always leave nice note on all the pics and I haven't seen her around.  I can't find her name to tag her but her avatar was a dachshund.

We really do have a great group of cakers here, so I don't see why we can't bring it back.  @Heath ‍ has asked for suggestions.  I don't know what the word games or scratch off was but I think the recipe thing is back.

@MsGF ‍ here it is.  Always left a nice comment.

thank you theresaf and carolinecakes

i didn't venture into the pictures that much before the metamorphosis -- I do a little more now -- but when people started posting critiques on the photos, even though they were invited to do so by the cake maker -- that was over the line to me -- anyone passing by would see all that correction and be put off in my opinion -- run for the hills put off -- critiques are good but not at that location -- not on the display board area -- 

and in other news as I said recently, the homeliest lopdsided cupcake and the still warm layer cake that is sliding right and oozing left pinned together for dear life with toothpicks has more charm, blood sweat tears and heart in some cases than the trimmest finest looking 5-tier -- kwim -- there's room for everybody --

I love a cool cake of course but I love cakes made by special needs kids/adults and I like beginner cakes and I like all the cakes in between and up to the designer ones-- I'm even starting to like the naked ones that have most of the icing scraped off unattractively and the layers are uneven, splotchy in color but they gotta have a Little decor! hahahaha

K8 you have a point.  The over the top quality of most of the cakes posted here stops many from posting their cake because it's 'too beginner' looking or the decorator is embarrassed it doesn't meet the high bar quality of most that are posted..  Do we need a section for beginners?   I also remember a time -- yrs and yrs back - when there was a group who's 'duty' was to see to it that each picture had a comment or two added so no one got hurt feeling because their cake never got any comments.  Of course we were to be as positive and uplifting as possible.  Anyone else remember that?

@ljdills ‍ I agree that not many comments ever seem to be made on cakes that are posted.  I thought maybe that it was just that nobody liked my cakes..... @MsGF ‍ is one who always seems to try to comment.  As mentioned above, she is the one with the daschund avatar.  I've posed questions directly to her and she was very helpful :-) 

I've been reading this thread for a while now but never chimed in. I am relatively new to the site and find it frustrating with all the issues but at the end of the day CC is a very valuable resource.  I will say when I pose a question in the forum I almost always get good feedback which I appreciate.  Not sure what it was like back in the day but hopefully improvements will continue and discussions will continue in the forums.