Hooray for people who like my baking and actually want to pay me for it! My first non-cheesecake paid request for a cake came from one of my husband's co-workers. And, although I have dreams of opening my own bakery on Freret St. when I win the lottery, my aspirations are oh so silly when you consider the way I work. I find my baking process somewhat similar to my writing process, and it brings me back to freshman year of college in my Communications Writing class. Sure I could whip out a story or a press release in an hour if you asked me to, but I'd much rather mull it over for a week. Let it simmer in the back of my head for a few days before I actually sit down and pop something out. Most call it procrastinating...I prefer to think of it as planning.

Baking is exactly the same way--it's a process. It's my process. I like to sketch it out in my head, tweak recipes, mix up the cake I found here with the frosting I got from that other book someone gave me. I like to research what other people do to overcome different obstacles. I think about how I can make crawfish made from fondant really look like an actual crawfish or how to get those edges nice and sharp. This cake on the other hand, while my process was definitely there it was packed into a short time frame from finding out via text message Monday that I had a request for a cake for Wednesday. That left Monday for mulling and Tuesday for making. It all worked out, but I would have liked to spend more time on the presentation.

How could I ever have a bakery when it takes days just for me to think about a cake? Easy: I'll be a millionare, so I can hire whoever I want to do the rest of the baking...then I get to pick and choose and bake whatever I want.

Anyway, back to Amelie's wonderful cake. I made the sour cream chocolate cake from Sky High, modified to 1.5 of the recipe to make enough batter for an 11x15 sheet pan. I definitely should have had a heating core in there too to help even out the baking, but alas, I have yet to buy one for myself. Instead, I turned the temp down to 325F so it wouldn't completely dry out before the middle of the cake set. The filling was a raspberry preserves recipe, that I now have no idea where I found, but it basically had frozen berries, sugar, vanilla bean, a little orange juice and some fruit pectin. The buttercream was Martha Stewart's Swiss Buttercream (chocolate variation) that has now become my new favorite frosting. By the time I got to the detailing, I didn't have enough of the swiss buttercream, and I also wanted to have some contrast, so I just made a basic creamed butter and powdered sugar chocolate buttercream.

I happened upon this article where she used a paint guard to smooth out her cake, and I have to say I highly recommend it. It was sooo easy to smooth out the sheet cake with this, and while I won't be pitching my angled spatulas anytime soon, I surely won't be fussing with them trying to smooth out my cakes. I'm still amazed at how well it worked. As for any other notes:

• my writing still needs practice, but honestly, what do I expect at 2 a.m.?
• I made one 11x15 sheet pan, and sliced it in half with one of those Wilton wire cake levelers. Because the sour cream cake is so delicate, I put it in the freezer to firm up a bit first, then slid the top half onto one of those flexible chopping boards. It was easy to turn it back onto the cake after filling it with the raspberry preserves.
• One of the corners got a little messed up once it was sliced in half, so I ended up cutting a bit more off that section of cake to make it even. I should have done this all the way around, because that side came out crisp and straight compared to the others. As long as you have a crumb coat, crumbs showing through the icing shouldn't be a problem.
• Don't skimp on the time in the fridge after you've frosted your cake. Having a your cake set in the fridge makes all the difference in the world when you're trying to even out your frosting and make things look sharp and crisp. Sometimes, when I'm feeling lazy, I'll skip this and just dig in. If you're really looking for a good looking cake: room temp frosting is easy to slather on, but letting it set in the fridge and then fixing your edges makes all the difference in the world for that perfectly iced cake. 
• There is no excuse to ever, ever use canned frosting. Making your own frosting is really soooo much tastier and now that I've done it enough, I can't believe there was ever a point when I thought the canned stuff tasted good. Give me that pound of butter in that fatty, oh-so-delicious buttercream over that chemically tasting canned stuff any day. 

~Happy Baking!