Wow! sounds like everything is really working out in your favor! Sounds like the the boss is very understanding as well and is going above and beyond for you! Now let's see about that b2b!

Good luck!

Cherim, good luck with the flakey bride! I'm a bit nervous about you decorating cakes that someone else has baked, but I'll be praying that all works out perfectly!
Wow, getting paid by your boss for working on cake...what a deal!

Cheri, I will pm you about the amount of glycerin added to RI ( soon as I find my notes !! - haven't actually done it myself !! )
It just stops the RI becoming rock hard on your cake

Would you mind giving me the recipe for the Jamaican Black Cake ?!

thanks !!

I have found a couple of recipes online but I will ask her what she does differently. Hers is so incredibly good. She may be an inconsiderate pain in my neck, but the girl can bake. It's funny, I went to their BBQ last weekend and was a bit nervous about the food. I knew that it was going to be all Jamaican food there and was very unsure about the whole thing... curry goat, cod fish, jerk pork, jerk chicken, beef and chicken patties (everything is screaming hot with spices from what I've heard). I've had gastric bypass surgery (my boss is a bariatric surgeon and did my surgery in Feb, I'm down 82 lbs so far!) so eating new foods at home doesn't worry me too much, but eating them out in public makes me a bit nervous because if they don't agree with me, they don't stick with me. Anyway, all of this and the dessert was fruitcake... I felt like running throught he McDonald's drive thru on the way there. Well, I didn't and I was a sport about the whole thing. I was so glad I waited. The food was GREAT. My favorite thing was the one thing I was the most cautious about... curry goat. It was fantastic! There were a couple of people there who had never had real Jamaican food before and the goat was all anyone could talk about. It was the most tender and delicious meat you could imagine. I thought everything would be too spicy to eat but everything was seasoned so perfectly, nothing was overly salty or spicy or anything. It was great. The the dreaded fruitcake, iced with hard-as-a-rock royal icing, was fantastic! I found out yesterday that the cake that I iced that day and they let sit for 2 days before cutting into it, the icing wasn't hard. I think the moisture from the cake had a chance to get into the icing and soften it up... probably helped to flavor it as well. She said it was perfect. It was the exact same icing that I used on the other cake. So I will ice this wedding cake tomorrow, and add a touch of glycerine to the icing and hopefully it will be a bit softer. My boss' wife was telling me that she asked this other lady, who does a lot of these cakes, what she does to her royal icing to keep it from getting too hard and she said that she puts a bit of shortening in it. I was like, uhhh, that's called buttercream, not royal icing. But maybe she just puts a tiny bit in. I don't know.

Oh, the b2b left a picture of the cake she wanted yesterday. I told Avril, oh, well that was nice of her, but I won't be doing that cake. It was covered in corneli lace. I said, if she had given me 6 weeks notice, and was paying me $1000 more for this cake, she could have corneli lace, but have one foot in the loonie bin and the other on a banana peel as it stands, I'd be in a straight jacket before I finished the top tier!

Cheri

Cherim,

Wow can't even believe they asked you that! I just had to say, I read your last post with my mouth wide open I tell you.

Do you know that I too had gastric bypass surgery and lost 82 pounds. I swear I'm not making it up. I went from 232 down to 150 exactly LOL.

I struggle to keep it off after having a baby but it saved my life. I too have some trouble with spices, but even moreso, with tough meats. I sometimes dread when someone makes a steak unless I know it's going to be butter-soft. I usually have to take some and spit it out if I come across gristle since it gets stuck in my stomach which I am sure you understand. So, things like goat which could be tough is hard in a part situation. I feel for you! *hugs*

If you ever want to talk about surgery issues, PM me. It's nice knowing someone else here at CC went through it too.

Big news!! Everything kind of came to a head today, most everything has been going on between my boss' wife and me and my boss has been left out of the loop. When he found out everything today that has been going on, he squashed the whole deal. He called up b2b and told her that 5 tiers is ridiculous, it will be 3 tiers and she said that she wants 5 tiers so she will just come and get the cake and have the original decorator do it for her. So I called up my DH and said, pack it up and bring it to me at work. he did and it's GONE and out of my hair. My boss said that he would reimburse me for any expenses that I'm out. I'm going to miss the $500 that I would have gotten, but I learned as a child not to count my chickens before they hatch. I will not miss all of this stress that I have been feeling! I want to do this cake (I made my sketch today and it would have been gorgeous). But I want to have more time to do it in. I will just have to find another bride who wants this cake, that's all! The bad news is that my boss is furious at the b2b and he and his wife are fighting about the wedding and stuff. It kinda sucks because they always get along, makes it nice to work in an office with a husband and wife who get along so well. This b2b seems to have really disrupted everyone's lives for a while.

B2b sounds like a piece of work...
Bummer about losing the opportunity and income, but just think, you'll have a nice, relaxing weekend!

Wow! Sounds like sort of a blessing in disguise though. She sounds like a headache. I mean, even if your usually-calm boss is getting mad over this thing, thats a good indicator you don't need to work for someone with that situation.

I say you will find an easier client who will say to you "what do you think?" and that's when you pull out your beautiful sketch and say, "I think this will be a gorgeous cake, perfect for you...."
And it wont be syrupy messy stuff, either LOL

*hugs*

No kidding... I can make my beautiful cake with buttercream and top it in a beautiful sheet of fondant and brush embroider away! No soggy, wet cake to try to ice with crappy royal icing!

OMG! Is the original decorator still available, with such short notice????!!! I have a feeling she may be calling you back! You have time to decide what you will say! Will you still do it.........or not??

I wouldn't touch this one.

I was furious to hear that she could take it to the original decorator... why cause me all of this stress when he could do it. Well, I find out today that he's NOT still available on such short notice. So she will be doing the cake herself. I suggested that she go to a cake shop and buy some gum paste flowers, or go to Michael's and buy some silk flowers and call it a day! I said that she should be VERY careful with the construction of a 5 tier cake though because she could come back from the wedding and find it on the floor. So I recommended that she read up on stacked tier construction.

oh wow. Part of me feels bad for Bridezilla because a) unless you know how to do it, a tiered cake isn't just going to stay vertical... b)trying to ice a cake with RI is tricky... (Actually I just got the hang of RI last year, before that I basically just made a really bad drizzle...) and c) she's going to ruin her own wedding cake by not knowing what she's doing...

But then again, she's the one who waited until the last minute, she's the one who wanted all sorts of crazy stuff (corneli lace in 2 days? C'mon!!! ) and she's just a totally inconsiderate clod!

I know, the two sides of me are fighting... one side of me wants to go and help her to keep it from becoming a disaster. The other side of me says, "no you won't go and help her, she can pay you to do the cake and and should have planned better." I ordered my cake months in advance and I got married in FL and live in NJ. You make arrangements to ensure that everything will be handled. I went down months in advance to sign all of the contracts with the reception hall place, meet the minister, the cake shop, the DJ, the florist, and everything else that I had to do. Then 6 weeks before the wedding I made another quick trip to check on everything. The bakery had been sold, the cake was a disaster, but that's another story for another time, but I was on top of everything. You have to be, or you have to hire a wedding coordinator who will be on top of this stuff for you. Those are your two options, otherwise, you're icing your own flippin' cake 2 days before your own flippin' wedding! But, that little part of me still feels sorry for her because I still have pictures in my head of 5 tiers of fruitcake laying on the ground of my boss' beautiful backyard!

Ok, I am officially absolving you of your guilt.

She knew she was getting married. She knew she wanted a cake. She knew she wanted a fancy Jamacian-me-crazy cake with Corneli lace.

She isn't your BFF, you haven't known her since grade school, you are a professional. You plan things out that need to be taken care of. It is not your fault she's a fruit-loop.

Forget about it this weekend, On Monday, listen to the boss' stories about what all went wrong (if she flaked on the cake, she probably forgot to order ice or food or something else, too!) and remember that it's not your fault.

If she calls you in hysterics before the wedding, if you have time, tell her that you will take care of it, FOR A PRICE, and make it a high one, she deserves that! And tell her that you will use your own design, since that's all you'll have time for. If she doesn't call, don't worry about it. And no volunteering to help, she sounds like she'd take you up on that and your time is worth more than her insincere thanks.

Ok it's offical...I am evil ...I'm laughing my butt off at Bridezilla!!
I hate to say it but she gets what she deserves Cheri and you shouldn't feel guilty or responsible for what happens.

KrazyCat cracks me up with the "Jamacian-me-crazy cake with Corneli lace." What was this Bride nutcase thinking, that you don't sleep??
Have a nice relaxing weekend and get the scoop Monday morning on what happened at the reception. Maybe they will bring you a piece of cake!!

While I understand that it is for your boss and you want to help him out I would strongly make them aware that you are not responsible for any mis- haps with the cake be it taste,texture etc...I would charge them per slice...so if the cake feeds 200 people eg: 200 X $2.50 a slice=$500.00..you may add or deduct according to how much decorating time and embelishments you add.Good Luck!!!

nothing to say but...

Jamacain-me-crazy cake!!!

BahBahBahhhhhh!!!

mommachris

So, it's Tuesday, any update on the Jamaican-me-crazy cake?