8th Zi'da, Arc 716
Guiseppe looked at her and smiled. "Of course, child! What are you going to make?" Faith told him and Guiseppe raised an eyebrow. "You make twice as many, I will try everything and we might put them for sale here, yes?" He seemed pleased with that idea so Faith calculated the ingredients that she would need, then got back on with the trial. It was a busy time and they were busy, but Faith was out the back, preparing the stock. It was typical of Guiseppe, who was very focused on money and profit, that he had both a restaurant and a shop; two opportunities for more nells, she knew. However, he was kind to her and whilst she did not doubt that partly that was because she was good at what she did here, he was generally a nice fellow, as long as his employees were working hard. Which meant, of course, that they'd had no problems at all.
On this particular trial Faith was working on a cake which had been ordered. It was a large cake, made up of seven different layers. The idea behind it was simple enough, the outside of it was going to be covered in beautiful white icing, covered with delicate patterns and swirls. Nestled in between the layers was a lemon meringue buttercream, which had tiny pieces of crisp meringue in it, to give the senstation of popping. Then, however, there were the layers. Each layer was a different colour, each a colour of the rainbow. The effect, when it was done, should be very good, Faith thought. She had made the cakes yesterday, each one in the big flat rectangular trays they used for making sandwiched roll cakes.The trays were perfect for this, because they were a large rectangle, which she needed, but they also weren't very deep. That was important, she knew, because by the time she piled seven layers on top of each other and with the filling in between, this cake was going to be very large. But it needed to be to feed the number of people, so she was happy.
First, she checked on the cakes she had made the trial before. Light sponge, each one with a vanilla essence in it so that it blended well with the lemon meringue buttercream. The colourings had turned out very well and Faith was pleased. She had spent a lot of time the trial before, to the point that Guiseppe had asked her if she was daydreaming, getting the food colourings just right. The ingredients which gave natural colour tended towards giving very pale colour, and Faith had particularly wanted these to be vibrant, like a vivid rainbow showing up against the white. She had made the colourings herself, using edible flowers, fruits and vegetables in order to make sure that she got the mixture just right. Then, when she was finally happy, she had made seven small testers to check that the flavours were right. She'd been delighted with the resulsts and made sure that she asked Guiseppe to try them. He looked at her and smiled, nodding his head.
"You did goood. Now. Make the damn cake, girl", he had said and Faith had smiled and dropped an obedient curtsy to him, before going and doing just that.
So, that morning she set about making the lemon meringue buttercream. That was fairly straightforward but she put a lot of time and focus into it, in order to make sure that it was just how it should be. Tiny explosions of lemon and crunches of meringue to give a counterpoint and texture against the light vanilla cake was the aim and so it had to be balanced. When she was absolutely sure that it was exactly right, she carefully assembled the cake. It had to be done with care and precision as a slip up here could ruin the entire affair, but Faith was, by now, a confident baker and she made sure that she had her tools prepared, the cakes laid out properly and everything set up for maximum efficiency.
So, she carefully layered the cakes one atop the other, Then, it was time to start the icing. She mixed up the lemon and vanilla icing which would be placed over this cake and made sure that it was at just the right consistency. After a few bits of mixing, it started to take on a dough-like quality, which was what Faith wanted. It was then easy to roll it out, dusting the area in icing sugar and rolling until it was more than big enough to cover the cake. Once it was on, and trimmed, she spent the last few breaks of the trial making the outside look as beautiful as the inside did. Careful decoration, delicate swirls and tiny white flowers adorned this cake, with tiny pips of icing in a chain around the bottom and the top edges. When she was finally done, she stood to the maximum of her five foot four and smiled, pleased with the result.
"Good work", Guiseppe said and Faith jumped a little. He was notoriously quiet on his feet, but she would never get used to it she was sure. "Take a break." With a nod, the young woman went and did just that, letting someone else package up what had taken her two, nearly three trials of work to make.
Off Topic
An example of what the cake might look like here
