Hello Lovelies! Happy Halloween for those of you celebrating.
I know, I have been on the quiet side of blogging as of late, but it has been with very good reason. I have been working on starting my business again and between testing recipes, re-vamping existing recipes thanks to supplier changes and or suppliers going bust, costing and pricing changes because man, has food ever gotten expensive,(whoa la!), creating cake contracts in English & French, building my own site in English & French, (It is the law here in Québec, all must be in French & then English which can be a serious challenge) designing my business cards, labels, starting social media accounts, networking where I can, and running around town to find all kinds of important stuff. Well, you can see it has been a serious roller-coaster ride and I am pooped!
Excited though, because I opened this week and already I am blessed, by Gods grace, I have an offer for a small but much appreciated catering contract.
I won't lie, it's a bit strange to have gone from having my own little shop, having good catering gigs and being a personal Chef for years, to go to starting from scratch. I am viewing this as an opportunity to do it right this time, that means, do not do more than is right for me in the world. That means respecting my injuries while doing what I love.
The next picture shows the logo in French-cool story about that. I went on Etsy and this awesome simple logo presented itself, turns out the seller was based in Montréal so she totally understood the language law issues and it was great! You can see further down below, I made it simple which allowed me to use it for creating my own business cards and labels for very little at Vista print.
These were early tests of cake recipes, I offer them in vegan versions too because us gluten sufferers often have multiple allergies or sensitivities. I like to accommodate and see happy faces when people realize they can have their cake and eat it too.
I love when chocolate cake is baking in the house, it smells like a bit of heaven. I enjoy this cake because it is a whole grain recipe that mellows as it sits, is super rich and moist, along with holding up well when I have to make layers. Best of all, it freezes without any problems. I made this cake with a very special whipped Nutella filling, rich chocolate buttercream that was drizzled with a gorgeous ganache. Then I had another chocolate cake that was a cute, little, itty-bitty, fall cake with a gummy frogs on top request(pic below), they were both a big smashing success and bonus, nobody knew it was all gluten-free until the person revealed it.
Amazement, it seems they had had some bad crumble, cardboard, craptacular, gluten-free cake experiences in the past; they were happy to gobble these though. I heard that the birthday girl refused to share the leftovers. Hehheh. Mission accomplished!
Working on cake recipes was costly but quite rewarding after I had achieved success and celebrated triumphantly, once I had gotten past the frustrating, going to throw these failures across the room, weep like a small child, and rock back in forth in abject dejection phase. It was not pretty folks but working without the stable proteins, that gluten used to provide, and get something one actually wants to ingest, is no small task. Oddly enough, white cake was hellacious, what a journey. I think I tried about 8-10 recipes before finally hitting a cake gluten-free flour mix that yielded the results I had been unable to recreate since my supplier went the way of the dino. Here she is all pretty and fresh out the oven in her vegan and not vegan glory:
Now we move onto decorating cupcakes. I worked in a cupcake shop that is very popular in Montréal, back in 2012. Sadly, it was my last professional kitchen gig for two reasons.
1-I became so ill from being surrounded by gluten, even though I was not eating it(for the most part, I had to have that éclair that one time, it was too good. I suffered though.) And then 2- My spinal injury was so bad that I lost all feeling in my right arm, woke up and it was like the whole right arm and hand did not exist. Yeah, pretty scary.
Thus began my 3 year culinary hiatus.
During that difficult period I had tried going back to reception work, I was dying a slow death and became seriously depressed. I am good at it but I know it ends up being a just for a pay-check job that does not satisfy my creative nature, and that is not how I want to view my work. I left and found other work but mass lay-offs killed my post and I have been struggling to find something that brings me joy, puts my talents to use, and does not place me at risk for more injury, ever since.
Thus the idea to start small my own business, once more, while continuing to blog and work on my cookbook. I love working as a personal Chef, providing meals for families who waste a small fortune eating out, making things taste delicious, catering events on both small and larger scale, as well as decorating cakes. Wrapping it up in gluten-free goodness that does not make me or my clients sick is a bonus. I also get to be doing what I rock at!
Back to the cupcakes...
I have found that making thousands of cupcakes by hand with my Chef colleagues did have a positive impact, in that I am now obsessed with having uniform and consistent decorations for my gluten-free cupcakes. There are worse things to be obsessed with, I suppose. The chocolate beauties down below were so luscious and perfect, chocolate silk goodness all around! Yes, I can make them vegan, the vegan coconut milk ganache one's are to die for!
I am still working on blog recipes, like this Rawfood, apple vegan surprise that will come soon but first I will be posting a raw vegan sesame cracker recipe for the following posts to come. I was playing in the kitchen a little while back and liked how the crackers turned out so keep coming back to check for that recipe.
I have to post this pic because with all the costing I have had to do, my brain felt fried. Math has always been a struggle for me, unfortunately, and getting ready for the business was not without it's challenges but I am feeling super psyched.
Here is the logo and I am including the link to my freshly minted and live site. If you or someone you know with gluten difficulties are in Montréal, and or surrounding area, and need a cake, event catered or personal Chef services, please keep me in mind. My Instagram is:lgglutenfree_
You and those enjoying the gluten-free yummies will not be disappointed!
Here is the link to the site and when ready, there will be cookies being sold on the on-line store once that is open. For now, enjoy!
http://lesgateauries.wix.com/glutenfree
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