sorry i dble posted and cant erase the wrong one!

I cant stand answering questions while im decorating! i have 4 kids from 14 - 7 and they all know now that if mama has a cake out DO NOT expect a nice answer!! they do help alot though. my oldest can make the bc and tint them to what ever color i need. sometimes they even bake the cake for me( i work at night) that way i can come home and start from there instead of haveing to bake and wait and then decorate!!

they are going to be posting soon im sure. i hope ya'll are as nice to them as me. they will know alot by then im sure!

as far as other people tring to tell me what i could have done to make whatever cake "better" !! that infuriates me!!
i recently did a bust cake of a friend of mine from work, when i brougth it in most every one was "WOW--OMG--HOW DID YOU DO THAT" (which of course we are all addicted to) but this one lady( always a bit outspoken) asks if the head was cake also, when i explained how i did it in mmf and airbrushed over a wif form; she acctually said "it would have been really good if it were all cake!!"
i told her there was no way that you could get the real facial details or even get it to stay up from the neck above because of the weight of the cake!!

she said" yes you could have! the bottoms cake isn't it!! " ahe obviously didnt have a clue so i just walked away!!

i thought the cake was great!

Here's one - THE WEATHER! Anyone help with that?? Summer, it takes forever for bc to crust, winter our house is super dry and it crusts before I can frost the cake. Rainy winter days are about perfect, tho.

WOW!!! I didn't think this topic would go this far! Cool!!!

I have destroyed so many tips. I just finally started remembering that I need to put my tips in the sink w/out the garbage disposal! I have destroyed a tip I can't find in any store! #22!!!

I have never heard of it called the "bullit method" but I learned that six years ago from my instructor! I have to use several bags with several colors most often and switch tips too often. Colors I don't switch tips with I just drop a tip in a disposable bag. I have really hot water so I just pick out a coffee cup I already have in my sink and fill it with soapy hot water and let my tips soak and by the time I am ready to get to them the icing has already fallen out of the tip and the grease has washed off. I still put them in my basket in my DW though!!!! Has anyone used those tip bags that Wilton makes that you can throw in your DW?

That would infuriate me, taking the spatula with icing and using it on a cake scrap and then putting back in the bowl!!! ARGH! My hubby doesn't eat cake he's more of a pie man!!! (That sounds really bad. ) It's my 4 year old that does it to me. I'll move the chairs far away from the island and he still manages to move it back. He also likes to rip off my exchanged tips that still have icing in them. "Hey you little creep. I was going to use that tip AGAIN!!!"


Amy

I hate taking the coupler out of the bag and I don't really like to make buttercream.

My two are taking the coupler out of the bag (as I hate greasy fingers!) and cleaning up all the mess... I hate the mess SO MUCH!!!

For cleaning tips and couplers, I put them in a bowl of hot soapy water and when I'm cleaning up, I put them in that wilton bag and hang them from the top rack of the dishwasher. They clean up every time.

Melissa

Zmama: The trashiness of some people never fails to shock me thoroughly. Between this thread and the Worst Christmas thread, I may yet lose faith in all humanity, lol.

My pet peeves:

Getting buttercream smooth so I can decorate the cake. I hate feeling like no matter how good I do, I'm alway afraid people will not be very impressed because the base frosting is not a perfectly smooth sheet like Walmart cakes. I try everything. I can't even get Melvira's technique to work, when I tried using a foam roller, to flatten everything, the frosting did flatten, but due to the crusting it wrinkled and left spidery cracks all over.'

My other pet peeve: running out of time for a cake to be ready. I HAVE to keep my kitchen clean as I work. I go bonkers if its not. But sometimes I am cutting it so close to get something finished (usually when something didn't go right and I have to do part of the process over again), that I end up just frantically working and not keeping everything constantly wiped down. That's when I get completely frustrated, and my husband knows he better stay on the other end of the house and not say a word!

My latest pet peeve is making MMF. For whatever reason, even though I've never had any problems in the past, and I haven't switched brands of sugar or anything, when I combine the powdered sugar with the melted marshmallows, I end up with MMF thats riddled with hard CLUMPS of powdered sugar! Endless kneading helps only a little, and it becomes impossible to roll out a perfect sheet of fondont to cover a cake thanks to having to pick out those hard clumps! I'm baffled. o.0

i think i sounded a bit full o fmyself on my last post so i just wanted to explain.....
i love suggestions from people here, my mom or anyone who has acctually done cakes! but for people to think they have an "idea" of how to do one to tell me how i can make a cake "better".... that p's me off.

and cake mommy..! (My hubby doesn't eat cake he's more of a pie man!!! That sounds really bad. ) .. LMAO!!!!!

tabs.....

Hey does anyone know where I can find that "blue dot" to put over my face? After that last comment I made I am quite embarrassed. 'course I could have edited it all out but we're mostly adults here right?


Amy

ok... so i have to say that doing ANY star fill-in project makes me completely insane. for instance, i have friends who will buy a paricular character pan or whatever and ask me to do a cake for them with that pan and tell me to keep the pan (which is thoughtful even though i'll never use it again!) if i can make their child this cake. ACCCCKKKKKK! I HATE STAR FILL-INS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(but, i do them anyway because i love my peeps!)

i usually dont have too much trouble with cleaning tips.... i send them through the dishwasher and that usually does it but i also have toothbrush that i use to clean them as well.....

One more pet peeve.... the squirrels in my 'hood love my cake apparently. One came INTO MY HOUSE,, took a bite of a finished handbag cake and left! I blamed my kids and they all were almost grounded b/c no one fessed up to taking a bite of the cake.... then i ooked closer at it and saw footprints!!! ewww.... so, i apologize, tossed the cake, started over (damn) and there we go. (i think he came in through a small gap we had next to the AC in the window....)

OH my goodness!! Ya'll are hilarious!!!!! I've gotten a good laugh reading the posts especially the one about the squirrel!!

My pet peeve is.. I'm my worst critict & I hate that!! I'm tooo serious when I'm decorating. I get to the middle point of having a cake done & I just want to cry. It doesn't look good at this point, I see everything I forgot to do, see everything I have to do & wonder how I can pull off a beautiful cake! I know I can do it eventhough I'm beating myself up. Here lately I stop & take pics of the beginning, middle & finally the finished cake. I look back & saw WOW!! I did that!! That's a great feeling! I wish I was more laid back like Ace is!!

The biggest thing I hate is the clean up. Good thing DH feels sorry for me at this point & helps me clean

Another thing - me going crazy, getting frustrated, mad, unhappy with the cake - only to have my DH look at me and say "Having fun?" Then of course cake comes out great in the end.

my husband usuallycleans up the mess because he loves a clean kitchen so no pet peeve there...

i guess my pet peeve is when my girls both teens, know i am going to be doing a cake and just when im about to decorate that's when they come to the kitchen HUNGRY and make themselves something to eat!!!!! drives me nuts

another pet peeve maybe unrelated..is when a customer asks for a specific design and i give them a price then they say its too much and "I'll just go to walmart"

Okay, I'll fess up most of you already have posted my "usual suspects" of pet peeves, but the one that really gets me it the puff of powdered sugar I get onto my face if I am too close to my KA when starting the mixer. Grrrrrrrrrrr You'd think I would have learned by now.

It always does come out great in the end! I guess we're just perfectionist!! It's gotta be perfect! I'd kill DH if he said that.

Ok,

I don't appriciate when I click on someone's cake to admire it they have the comment turned off. If I took the time to look at your cake you could at least give me the option to tell you what I liked the most about it.

I have seen some, no so good, decorated cakes but I still find something nice about it and add in the comment section. That person may need the lift. Usually if a cake is bad no one leaves a comment

Since I "rent" space, my #1 pet peeve is having to spend a DAY or more cleaning the space up to the point that it's an acceptable level of clean for me. I swear, I can be gone one day in a week long stretch, and when I come back, I've got to spend another day cleaning because someone decided to use a table without cleaning up ANYTHING after themselves.

#2 Brides who think after reading Martha or some bridal magazine the cake they want is going to just take a couple hours to complete from start to finish, cost $.50/pp, and use all imported ingredients. Or that they want to use sheet cakes or cupcakes to finish out servings to save money. AND, that people are going to eat passion fruit (or pick your exotic) flavored cake in a small rural midwestern town -- YEA RIGHT! Folowed by the "It's JUST CAKE"

#3 Reception site/catering staff doing the snippy rounds of questioning about knowledge, skills, and abilities ... You know, the ones where it's not honest curiosity about those things but instead accusing you of not being licensed without saying it in words. It's like "just ask to see a copy of my license you IDIOT! "..

Hey Janette, I can't get people to actually critique my cakes and if they do they apologize. I really want to get better, but sometimes I just don't see my own errors. "Critique is to provide an assessment of a piece of work from a third party!"

So I guess this is another pet peeve of mine. People that don't critique when I actually ask for an assessment!

I hate when my niece and nephew (he sometimes helps me bake and stuff but sometimes not) are running up and down the stairs and then to one room to the next and when the want snacks. . .it drives me even more insane. . .

I also hate when my mom comes over and says, "WOW, that's gorgeous. . ." when I'm not done yet; it's annoying.

I also hate when my brother comes into the kitchen and says, "Ew, I bet that tastes like crap," even though he knows he's going to eat some later. . .

I also hate when my dad tries to teach me what I already know (he bakes sometimes too) or when he tries to tell me that's not how you do something even though EVERYONE on CC says it is. (i.e. wrapping the cake up and putting it in the freezer while it's STILL warm).

I have many more, but I will get pissed off if I write all of them.

Jacqrose: thanks for clearing the situation up; I too was a bit offended by your previous post.

Some 13-year-olds are very business-oriented and may know a lot; just because you don't own a business doesn't mean you can't give input on a business forum.

no hard feelings.

for cleaning tips i use the microwave method. just make sure to keep an eye on it when it reaches about 1 1/2 mins to prevent bubble overflow!

[quote="frstech"]Ok, apparently I have been under a rock, what is the "BULLETT METHOD" with the tips??


Thankfully, you are not alone under the rock??? Please enlighten!! My pet peeve is the part where you have to get the decorating bag ready for frosting and decorating....

oh! i came up with another few!

1. coloring fondant. turns my hands crazy colors!
2. making red or black icing. i just can't do it. i make pink and gray icing.
3. not knowing what order to do things in and managing my time so that i'm not interrupted in the middle of something that needs to "flow"

I live with a lot of people and decorate from home. I've only been selling cakes for a few months and by no means am a business. BUT I do hold myself to very high standards when it comes to cakes people are paying me for. And then my mom will walk into the kitchen and stick her finger right into my icing and lick it!!!! And I'll say, I'm selling that!!! Don't stick your dirty finger it!!! and she'll say, "I just washed my hands"... but I KNOW she's been sitting on the couch watching TV for half an hour. Then I have to throw away the whole batch and make fresh. It makes me gag just thinking about someones dirty fingers being in something I'm eating!

It also drives me crazy when random people who can't bake a frozen mrs. smith pie will try to tell me what might work better for my cake...

OR one time I made a stacked cake and someone asked me if I remembered to put dowel rods in it. I have NEVER forgotten or not put dowel rods in a cake! And she asked me that like I often forgot! grr. She's never decorated a cake, only knew from me that dowel rods even went inside cakes! *twitch twitch*

Offering someone a discounted cake because they are a close friend or close family and then they decide to be annoyingly specific and picky. Not even a bride is that picky you madman and it's just a 26th birthday!

Tiptop,

I'm willing to bet you already know if there is something wrong and beat yourself up. I try to find what you did well to motivate you.

And besides I'm afraid if I said anything neg the other members would find me and beat me up.

I am so laughing over here about everyone's pet peeves!!!!!

What a lucky girl you are to have your hubby help you clean up. Mine would sooner starve than help me. 'course he'll step in if I'm flying around the kitchen like a mad woman trying to clean up. Little does he know THAT's my way of getting him to help!!!

I get frustrated when I can't leave a comment on a cake that I really want to leave a comment on. I think the members don't know that there is an option to turn the comments on or off! It's still frustrating even though they may not realize it! If I really have to leave a comment because I am just in awe of a technique they used and I can't leave a comment, I'll just send a pm!


Amy