Almost Crazy

Couple of weeks ago, my supervisor's daughter got married, and for the rehearsal dinner my supervisor asked if I could make a cake for her. A slow week for my classes and some imbalance of chemicals in my brain led me to agree to make the cake for my supervisor.

I never stopped to consider I make everything from scratch. Why couldn't I be the "cake from the box type" and just give her a two slabs of cake held together by frosting? So this is what I agreed to make: green tea fraisier.

This cake required three separate components: the green tea sponge cake, the mousseline, and the green tea whipped cream.

The measuring of ingredients took me half an hour, and removing the pots and baking sheet from the oven took another ten minutes. This situation doesn't help that I have a tiny kitchen. The only counter space available is about the size of school desktop.

The sponge cake required two different batter: one egg yolk based and the other egg white based. The mousseline needed a custard that has to be heated and cooled. Plus, I had to wait for the unsalted butter to soften before mixing it in the custard, then this has to cool in the refrigerator for another 2 hours. This entire process took 5 hours, and I started at 6:00pm Thursday night.

The next morning killed me. I almost cried when the whipping cream would not hold shape. Not matter how long or at what speed I was whipping it, the damn cream remained a bubbling pool. This forced me to run out to the store to get ice and a new carton of whipping cream, since I believed my house was too hot for the cream to form. After an hour and a half, I was able to pipe the cream on top, toss them in a box, and ran to work with a box of uncut strawberries in hand so I can decorate it later.

From this experience, I learned never to promise anyone I would deliver one of my creations in less than 24 hours. Probably a good choice to not go to culinary school.