my new gig

YAY YAY YAY I work at a bakery. Man oh man is there any better place? Methinks not.

My supervisor basically said I could take pictures of whatever I want, as long as I make the bakery look good. Which is not a hard job. For example, these: 

Apple tarts. We basically cannot keep them in stock. Mere minutes after I took this photo, someone came in and bought the last four (!)

French pastries:

We have all the usual suspects (fruit tart, lotsa cakes, lotsa napoleons, eclairs).

Cookies galore…

The chocolate ones are basically the banes of my existence because they MELT under the hot lights and we pick up everything with gloves so every time I see a little kid come in to the bakery I kind of always wince because I know they will want a chocolate heart and I know I’ll get all grody.

Quesadilla!

    

Though most of our pastries our french, most of our clientele is Hispanic (which is FANTASTIC for me- I am basically getting a free refresher course in Spanish). Thus, we stock a few Latin American baked goods, including the above quesadillas. As you can see, it bears no resemblance to anything you’d buy at Taco Bell. Rather it is a cornbread, imbued with parmesan cheese and sprinkled with sesame seeds. Delish!

Caaaake, caaake! (Please tell me there’s some Little Britain love up in here)

Most of our business is in cakin’. We do lotsa sizes, lotsa flavors (that gorgey looking fruit one is our most popular, followed by tres leches). It’s fun seeing the cute decorations. One dad came in with his little boy today—his birthday cake will be rocked out with Spongebob.

During lulls, I practice writing with icing… on paper towels. Klassy.

Aaaaaand at a certain point in the day it appears to be the custom to chow down on a baked good. Since I worked 4-8 today, we’ll call what I ate at 6:30 “dinner”, which makes me feel better about its substantial magnitude:

Almond croissant oh yes oh yes!

This is the food that made my best friend officially leave veganism forever. I mean, before she had started eating yogurt, but once you go buttah, you never go back.

After some lessons gleaned on my last day of work, I brought a bakery survival kit of sorts:

Lotion to avoid raw chafed hands since I wash them so much.

A book to avert boredom during the lulls (this is short stories, which I figure will be good since I’m interrupted a lot. I actually got it for free at the British Embassy on my embassy tour. It’s short fiction by British authors, including my great love Ian McEwan. I dig!) .

Finally, tea- as of a few weeks ago Suffuse Tea was giving away free samples at their website, word to the wise. The tea is VERY NECESSARY, as there is a constant pot of coffee at work and it is way too tempting to get overcaffeinated. Thus, rooibos!