SO, my boyfriend volunteered me to make cakes for his oldest daughters boyfriends birthday. About 50+ people were suppose to show. More like 20-25 showed, but the point was Andres (the boyfriend) likes Burnt Almond cake & I figured for that many people I will just do 2 cakes & one will be chocolate. You can never lose with chocolate, right?! Burnt Almond takes alot of time to do & many ingredients! I use to work in a bakery for about 20 years and so I use to decorate & at some point started making all the icings, etc..
I made the cakes the night before, and the burnt almond crunch. I gave myself about 3 hours to make the icings and decorate the cakes. I make the icing from scratch and ice the cakes right away. The 2nd cake was chocolate, strawberries & buttercream. I can not give out my burnt almond cream recipe, but I must say it turned out delicious! I brought some in for a girl at work, who loves to bake also & she could not stop eating it & begged for the recipe. The only thing I have to say, is that when I know how to prep a recipe, I never go by the measurements. I do my own thing, whatever looks right. Hard to explain, I guess it is like something you know so well, you don't have to follow directions. You know what it is suppose to look like.
One thing, I do miss about working in the bakery is the fact that you have a huge table to work on. I had to sweep my floor 4 times in this process. And then this morning mop it, I would have mopped it that day or the next but time restraints and to many people in the house at one time.
