What a Great Feeling!

I am not a professional pastry chef or cake decorator. I have not had any formal lessons and am actually book and internet-taught. I am just a humble home-baker who loves to bake for her family and who is always on the lookout for new recipes and techniques.  That's about it.  Only recently did I start sharing my baked goodies with other people.  What they have to say about my baking always makes me anxious.  So when I get high praises, it is a big deal to me.  It is a good feeling.

Yesterday, my sister in-law's sister, Gina, picked up a birthday cake she had ordered from me.  The cake was chocolate chiffon with a basic custard filling, frosted with chocolate Swiss Meringue Buttercream and topped with the fondant roses I had made earlier.  At the last minute, I added flaked almonds to the sides of the cake as I wasn't too happy with the way I had frosted it. 

Gina had asked me to put the cake in a cake carrier as she was to travel about 2 hours by train back to her house.  She said that in her three train changes, people sitting next to her (viewing the cake from the transparent carrier and admiring it) asked where she had the cake made. She had some of my "business" cards with her which she then gave out to people right on the train! 

That alone would have made my day.  But the way she described eating the cake was even better.  She said "it was an OMG cake experience", that everything about the cake was perfect, even the flowers!  She had more gracious words, which to my mind were a little overboard, but she kept on saying she wasn't kidding...

If that doesn't inspire me to keep on baking, I don't know what will.  It's exactly the same feeling I got when my daughter's laptop bag became a conversation piece at her school.

Here's my cake...hope you'll like it as well!