On Monday I had my work test at one of the bakeries I had interview at. It went alright, I cut and filled and masked two chocolate cakes with a rich fudgy icing, and then I made a dozen key lime pies. I was done in a hour and a half and I set off to school early. Stopping at Upper Crust for lunch, their Italian stew is delicious! Over an hour later I had a phonecall, my key lime pies had come out the oven wrong. This was odd for several reasons, for a start this was the first time I’d heard of key lime pies being baked, secondly even if they are being baked over an hour is far too long. But they said they’d let me know by Wednesday whether I had got the externship there or not.

Wednesday rolls around and the phone call comes.. They can’t decide between me and some other person, can we do a phone interview on Thursday morning? Sure, ok.. back to waiting.

So yesterday morning I’m sat waiting, I need to go out cycling, I need to shower, I don’t want to start anything until they’ve rung or you can guarantee they’ll ring while I’m in the shower and unable to answer or something similar.

The phonecall finally appears and we talk for a little while, about my last job and about me.. things that you would have expected at the main interview, but then it is just for an externship, not for a job. And at the end of the conversation I’m told… I got the externship!

I am so amazingly happy!

We talked a little more about details, it’s going to be very early mornings, a big change to my schedule (I’ll be leaving the house at half 5 every morning). But I should be finished around 5ish so I’ll get to spend evenings with DmentD. I’m going to be there for wedding season, it’s going to be busy, I’m going to have to be on my toes at all times, notepad ready to take notes on anything I need to remember. I’m so excited I can’t wait.

The past two days in class have been the nod to American decorating. We made a chiffon cake and covered it in Italian buttercream. Then we had to pipe buttercream flowers.

I’ve gained a respect for the people who can do these flowers and make them look good, but I still maintain the Americans are insane for wanting them in the first place, go for gumpaste, they look far better and much more realistic.

It’s my Grandad’s birthday today, so I piped his name onto it. Happy Birthday Grandad!

I was fairly happy with it, for my first attempt at the flowers they didn’t come out too badly. The petals for the roses needed to be spread out a bit more, and the yellow ‘generic’ flowers need more work, one was good, the others not so much. My shell border is improving, it was consistent all the way round, and my writing is getting better. The basket weave edge was a bit wibbly, but again, for a first attempt I’ve seen worse.

Today we start on the more European style cakes. We’ll make a cake we’ll decorate next week with marzipan and poured fondant, and we’re going to make the pastillage we’ll be using on a couple of cakes so it has time to dry out before we need to use it.

Then after class we’re off to New Orleans for my first Mardi Gras!