The Beautiful Chaos Behind a Birthday Cake
Or: Why I say yes to bespoke cakes despite all available evidence suggesting I shouldn't.
I nearly said no to this cake.
Actually, that's not entirely true.
I thought about saying no to this cake.
The trouble is, I always think about saying no to bespoke cakes.
Then I say yes anyway.
My son Riley finds this highly amusing.
"Why did you say yes?" he asked me this week as I stood staring at a 10-inch birthday cake that still needed decorating.
It's a fair question.
The thing is, Riley has spotted a pattern.
A customer asks if I'd make them a cake.
I say yes.
Immediately.
Without hesitation.
Without asking any sensible follow-up questions.
Then, usually a few days later, I start regretting my life choices.
It's a cycle.
I've accepted that now.
The Bespoke Cake Cycle
Customer asks for cake.
I say yes.
I feel pleased.
Customer explains what they actually want.
Mild panic.
Severe panic.
Why did I say yes?
Cake somehow gets finished.
Customer loves it.
I swear I'm never doing another one.
Return to step 1.
The Veuve Clicquot cake was a perfect example.
"Would you make me a birthday cake?"
Of course I would.
In my head, I'm already imagining a nice Bruce Bogtrotter-style chocolate cake. Maybe some buttercream. Nothing too dramatic.
Then came the words:
"We'd like a bottle of champagne."
A bottle of champagne.
Made out of cake.
At which point I smiled politely while internally screaming.
(If you'd like to read the full story of the Veuve Clicquot cake disaster, you can find it here.)
This week's cake wasn't quite that dramatic.
A vanilla sponge filled with lemon buttercream, fresh raspberries and pistachios. A special birthday cake for a special celebration.
Lovely.
What could possibly go wrong?
Well, quite a lot as it turns out.
The weather had been dreadful all week. One minute pouring with rain, the next threatening sunshine before changing its mind again. Trade had been quiet, and like many small businesses at this time of year, I've been looking closely at staffing levels.
It's never an easy decision, but I've recently had to reduce the hours of two members of staff because there simply isn't enough business to justify having everyone in five days a week.
Friday was supposed to be manageable.
Hannah was away in Barcelona for the week. Somewhere I would have much rather been, if I'm honest. Particularly when I was standing in Tetbury looking at another grey sky and a birthday cake that still needed decorating.
But I still had Grace and Riley.
Three of us.
Not ideal, but enough.
I could do the baking.
I could do the cooking.
I could somehow fit in decorating a large birthday cake.
It would be fine.
Looking back, this was probably my first mistake.
At just after 6am on Friday morning, my phone pinged.
That's never good, is it?
Nobody messages at that time of day with good news.
For a few seconds I considered not looking.
If I didn't open the message, perhaps the problem didn't officially exist yet.
Unfortunately, running a café doesn't work like that.
One of my team wasn't going to make it in.
And just like that, my carefully planned Friday disappeared.
Now it was just me and Riley.
Of course, because hospitality has a wicked sense of humour, Friday was also the day the weather finally improved.
The same week we'd been staring out of the hatch watching rain fall and wondering where everybody was, the sun suddenly appeared and so did the customers.
The coffees started.
The lunch orders started.
The queue appeared.
And sitting quietly in the corner, waiting for me, was a 10-inch birthday cake that wasn't going to decorate itself.
Or stop judging me.
There are moments in hospitality when you look around and wonder how on earth you're going to get everything done.
This was one of those moments.
The funny thing is, customers never see that bit.
They don't see you decorating a cake in ten-minute bursts between serving lunches.
They don't see you mentally rewriting the day's plan every half an hour.
They don't see the slight panic when another order comes in just as you've finally picked up the piping bag.
They certainly don't see you wondering why you ever agreed to make the cake in the first place.
What they see is the finished product.
The beautiful cake.
The smile.
The cheerful, "Here you go, enjoy your celebration."
And somehow, despite everything, that's exactly what happened.
The cake got finished.
The customers got fed.
The coffees were made.
And then, bless her, Grace managed to come in later in the day and help us through the afternoon despite feeling exhausted.
By the end of the day, I was hanging on by a thread, fuelled largely by determination, decaf mochas and a frightening amount of buttercream. Mother Nature played a cruel trick when she gave me a love of coffee but not the ability to drink caffeine.
But the cake was finished.
The customer collected it and was delighted.
Later, they sent me this photograph.
Looking at it now makes me smile.
Not because it's the most technically impressive cake I've ever made.
Not because everything went perfectly.
But because nobody looking at that photograph would have the faintest idea what it took to get there.
They don't see the staffing worries.
They don't see the weather worries.
They don't see the lunch rush.
They don't see the constant juggling act that happens behind the scenes of a tiny independent café.
They simply see a beautiful cake and two people celebrating a special birthday.
And that's probably how it should be.
Hospitality is a bit like a swan gliding across a lake.
From the outside, everything looks calm and effortless.
Underneath, we're paddling like mad.
