I got something cool to share with you guys 🙂

A couple of months ago I was lucky enough to be invited to do a demonstration at ABC Cakes Shoppe and Bakery in Orange, CA last Saturday, 10/8/11 for the California Cake Club Fall Quarterly Meeting. Although I’ve been teaching for a year now, something about doing a demonstration in front of sugar art professionals made me a little nervous. Boy, am I glad I accepted the offer and came out to Orange, California because I found a gem…

   

The store is located in a cute little strip mall off a main avenue, with an ample parking, and great signage so you can’t miss it. I was welcomed by this big o’ Gingerbread Man Baker in the window.

    

They when I walked in…… “WOW! This place is HUGE”, I said out loud LOL

The staff (about 25 employees total) are very friendly and knowledgeable. While I was there (9am-5pm) I saw about 8 customers come in to pick up their cake and cupcake orders. I also saw about 5 customers checking off their list of supplies/ingredients they had in hand. One even said to me: “So glad this place is a one-stop-shop or else I’d be in trouble”. I believe she had forgotten a cake pop order due the next day. Oops!

So here’s a tour of this super awesome store:

(which, by the way, has over 11,000 SKUs, just so you get an idea of the amount of supplies that are sold here)

 

The very first thing I always look for in cake and candy supply stores is their sprinkles assortment. I believe it’s essential to have something for everyone and for everything 🙂

   

The next thing I look for is seasonal items. This is where you can usually find pretty cool things that you MUST get before you can never find them again. I was amazed to see that ABC Cakes did not only have a bunch of stuff  but that they actually had two isles full of them!

I loved that they had all kinds of sizes of cookie cutters including the minis that I often use in my designs. They also carry a large number of copper cookie cutters that are often hard to find and pretty expensive when you do.

   

Need boards? boxes? containers of any sort? Check out the two stocked up isles of them.

From licensed characters to general shapes to adult pans…. they got them here. Also available for rent.

Now let me tell you about my day here:

I had a little corner setup where I was displaying our catalogs, selling a few ‘mallow supplies and chatting with the customers and fellow 3 C’s (CA Cake Club) members.

How cool is the TV on top of the work table? Pretty cool if you ask me! This way everyone can see what’s the instructor is doing regardless of where they are seated.

We had about thirty members and board directors show up for the weekend-long event. I was first up and everyone was anxious to see what I was going to do. Mind you, these are all pros and I’ve only been working with sugar for about two years now. Well, I tried to relax and get the show on the road…

Let’s get started 🙂

(Oh, by the way, these ladies were a blast. They had some funny jokes and hilarious stories. They were all smiling back at me which helped me relax haha)

   

Coloring the sugar and explaining how water affects marshmallows.

   

Giving tips on proper care of finished pops. Next, decorating and adding all the details to the pops.

And here ya go 🙂 We made a Candy Corn pop and  a Pumpkin Patch pop.

At the end of the demo, everyone clapped and ran to the table to snap photos of the pops. I was blushing when they were telling me how much they enjoyed it and how they really liked learning something totally new. Many congratulated me for being “…very talented and creating beautiful marshmallows”. I was walking on clouds =0)

There’s more though…. The owner, Mary, said she’d love to have us come teach at her store.

So we’ll be adding ABC Cakes to our class locations starting early 2012. YAY!!

(More details regarding class schedule here will be available in mid-December)