Guest Baking at CoCo's

About a month ago I was hanging out at CoCo's Cupcake Cafe when owner Shea Mullen asked me "Hey, would you like to be a guest baker here sometime?"  My initial reaction was "Are you crazy?!?!  I'm an engineer, not a baker!!"  I thought about it for a little while and realized that I would probably never get an opportunity like this again, so I accepted.

Last Saturday I dragged myself out of bed at 5:30am and headed over to CoCo's for the morning baking shift.  I watched the sun rise over Pittsburgh's rivers and bridges as I drove to Shadyside -- what a beautiful way to start the day!  I found the amazingly awake and alert Kristen bustling around the bakery, getting the kitchen ready for the day's work.  She immediately set me to the task of measuring the water and sugar for the italian meringue buttercreams.  After I got the pot on the stove she assigned me the job of making all of the vegan cakes.  Exciting!  She handed me the recipes out of CoCo's big binder of secrets and I got to work.

After I finished mixing the batter (with a whisk -- no mixers here, CoCo's is hardcore) Kristen handed me a scale and had me divide the batter in half.  She added cocoa powder and red food coloring to one of the batches and had me whisk it together.  Dark streaks of purple combined with swirls of beige and red to form the vegan red velvet batter.  Pretty!
After Kristen examined my batter for lumps she grabbed an ice cream scoop and quickly filled an extra-large cupcake-pan.  Her speed was incredible; it was almost like watching one of those industrial factory robots!  When she was finished she turned to me and asked "Hey, do you want to turn the regular batch into Vegan Blacktops?"  "YES!!" I shrieked.  She handed me a bag of super dark cocoa powder and a small spoon and told me to put a spoonful of cocoa powder onto the top of each cupcake.  Then she took a toothpick and swirled the cocoa powder into the batter.  Finally she popped the tray into the convection oven.  In the whole time it took me to do two batches of vegan cupcakes, Kristen finished about four batches of regular chocolate and vanilla cakes.  Crazy!
Next Kristen had me chop up five pounds of butter for the buttercream.  (The sugar water I had put on the stove earlier had been combined with egg whites in the industrial sized mixer, and the concoction had been blending for quite some time.)  When the mixer bowl was cool to the touch Kristen had me slowly add the butter.  After I finished with the buttercream Kristen had me heat up some heavy cream and pour it on top of some chopped chocolate to make a big bowl of chocolate ganache.
Next Kristen frosted the Vegan Blacktop and Vegan Red Velvet cupcakes and dipped a third of the chocolate and vanilla cakes into the ganache to make the Audrey and Dark Side of the Moon cupcakes.  She even let me frost some of the Vegan Blacktops and dip some of the Dark Sides and Audreys.  Man, dipping those cupcakes in ganache is way harder than it looks!  I dropped a couple into the ganache; luckily the ganache was really thick so they didn't sink very far before I fished them out.  I tried gripping the cakes harder so that they wouldn't slip out of my hand, but then they ended up with dents on the bottom.  Augh!
Next we baked some Spicy Chocolate, Honey Spice, and Lemon Mint cupcakes for a wedding tasting that afternoon.  I got the fun task of sprinkling chili powder and cardamom on top of the Spicy Chocolate batter and swirling it in with a toothpick.  Kristen tackled the Honey Spice cakes while I made the Lemon cakes.  This time the recipe was a bit more complicated so I got to use a mixer.  Woot!

Kristen wasn't happy with the first batch of Honey Spice cupcakes, so she re-did them.  I thought they tasted amazing (especially warm), though they were a bit denser and more buttery than usual, almost like Honey Spice muffins.  (Kristen also culled some lopsided chocolate and vanilla cupcakes from the earlier batches -- CoCo's has very high aesthetic and taste standards.)  The upside to having high standards is lots of rejects to eat.  Yum!
As the second batch of Honey Spice cupcakes baked we prepared a couple of special orders.  Kristen had me pick and clean some mint leaves and raspberries for a batch of Audreys for a wedding shower.  She also handed me a huge bag of silver dragees and asked me to put them on the top of some Ellsworth and Vanilla/Chocolate cupcakes.  I carefully settled a single dragee on the peak of each cupcake.  By this point the ganache cupcakes had cooled enough to decorate, and we carefully placed fondant crescent moons and flowers on all of the Dark Sides and Audreys.
Next Kristen made the lemon mint frosting for the Lemon Mint cupcakes while I grated some lemon zest for garnish.  She frosted each cupcake while I followed behind sprinkling lemon zest on top.   I began carrying trays of completed cupcakes out to the display case.  By the time I finished placing the vegan cupcakes and ganche-covered cupcakes in the display case, Kristen had finished frosting all of the buttercream cupcakes.  Crazy!  She pulled out a big box of sprinkles and we split up the task of decorating the buttercream cupcakes.  Unfortunately I didn't check the alignment of the lid on my shaker and when I slowly tipped it over the first cupcake a downpour of orange nonpareils came out.  Oops.  Hopefully some small child enjoyed the vanilla chocolate cupcake completely covered in orange sprinkles...
As I took the buttercream cupcakes to the display case Kristen prepared the Tiramisu cupcakes by poking a hole in the top of the chocolate cakes, pouring a mixture of coffee and Kahlua inside, and then filling the hole with coffee and Kahlua cream cheese frosting.  She frosted the Tiramisu cupcakes and I transferred them to the display case while she made the peanut butter frosting for the Peanut Butter Chocolate cupcakes.  She handed me a pastry bag full of peanut butter frosting and had me frost half of the cupcakes.  They didn't come out quite as even as hers, but hopefully nobody noticed.  I put the ones I frosted on the back of the tray in the display case, haha.

Lastly we decorated the cupcakes for the wedding tasting.  (And by "we" I mean "Kristen".)  She did an amazing job of frosting some Lemon Mint cupcakes to look like gorgeous yellow flowers while I took a handful of white fondant and attempted to dye it "eggplant".  After my fondant passed Kristen's inspection she showed me how to roll it out and cut shapes from it.  She sliced off some long thin strips to make some bows for the Honey Spice cupcakes, and handed me some tiny flower cookie cutters so I could make some fondant flowers for the Spicy Chocolate cupcakes.  She carefully shaved some white and dark chocolate into long rolls for the chocolate bliss cupcakes, and arranged all of the cupcakes on a silver platter for the tasting.  Beautiful!
We finished up the cupcakes just as the shop opened at 11am, and after that it was dishes time.  I spent the next twenty minutes washing various dishes (including a mixer bowl the size of a small bathtub) while Kristen wiped down our workspaces and cleaned up the kitchen.  After we finished cleaning up Kristen headed home (crazy how you can do a full day's work before noon!), while I helped Ananda (the other owner of CoCo's) arrange the cupcakes for the wedding tasting on a tiered serving platter.  I hung around CoCo's for another hour or so.  Amai stopped by with some friends and they tried the Vegan Blacktop and Chocolate Peanut Butter cupcakes that I helped make.  They seemed to like them which was reassuring -- I'd have felt feel terrible if I'd messed up any cupcakes that people actually paid for!  Shortly after Amai and her friends left I decided to go home.  I was so excited the previous night that I hadn't been able to sleep at all, and by 2pm I was ready for a nice, long nap.

Well, that was my experience being a guest baker at a cupcakery.  I had a wonderful time and I'm so thankful to Shea and Kristen for letting me pretend to be a professional cupcaker for a day.  Hopefully I wasn't too much of a distraction!