Day 1

The first day at the bakery was completely devoted to baking. I know that seems obvious, but other tasks are involved in the baking business.

The workers needed some chocolate ganache for future use of filling and frosting, so one took me aside and showed me the step-by-step process of making ganache. She taught me how to make one bowl of ganache and left me to complete the next batch by myself—with her available for questions of course.

Beginning the process, I measured out the correct amount of dark chocolate on the scale and cut the chocolate into small slices with a chocolate fork. You have to make sure the pieces of chocolate are thin enough so they all melt or else solid chucks of chocolate would be in the ganache. You also have to continually place the pieces into a bowl as you cut the chocolate. I had to learn that the hard way. The pieces of chocolate piled up and limited the amount of space I had to work, and I ended up spilling about half of the supplies. Luckily, my sponsor didn’t get mad and simply replied, “It happens.” I made sure to be extra careful when I measured and sliced the second time. (I haven’t yet made another spill!) I heated up the butter and cream making sure only the rim had bubbles forming. After pouring the liquids into the bowl with the chocolate, I whisked the ingredients together, and, once it was all incorporated, covered the mix with a plastic wrap directly on top of the ganache. You have to put the wrap literally on the ganache because “water and chocolate do not mix.”

Concluding the day, I measured batter for cakes, placed batter into cupcake sheets, and washed dishes. In fact, the dishes took an hour and a half straight to clean. The dishes are actually done throughout the whole day, but it is only a couple mixing bowls or spatulas here or there; at the end is when everything gets cleaned. I was very surprised about how much needed to be clean.