The Bouqs Company

I came across the Bouqs Company  when searching for a Mother's Day bouquet. I was intrigued by the company's business plan. Flowers are cut when a customer orders one of forty four showcased bouquets. Bouquets typically arrive four days after being cut. Axing the middleman and shipping straight from the farm allows customers to receive fresher flowers that will last longer. The company also claims to practice sustainable, eco-friendly farming whereby flowers are only cut when ordered. Additionally, employees who work on the flower farm receive healthcare, adult education, and competitive wages. I like knowing where my flowers are coming from and that the people whose efforts cheered up my day are hopefully really being taken care of. 

Having received lackluster flowers that don't adequately bloom in the past, I decided to see if flowers ordered straight from a farm would last and actually bloom. I chose the Swiss Family bouquet, which was a combination of pink and white roses. Customers have a choice between a single, double, or triple bouq. I opted for the double, i.e., one dozen roses. The more roses the merrier. Each tier has a set price which includes shipping.  Love that all costs are calculated into one price. 

Fresh out of the box. 

South American farm fresh roses. 

Two dozen roses received four days after cut. 

Love how flowers instantly change the atmosphere of a room.

One and a half weeks later.Beautifully opening up.

Just shy of three weeks, the white roses have proven to be willful little blooms. 

As you can see, the flowers definitely had lasting power. The pink roses lasted just over two weeks. A number of the white roses are still gracing us with their beauty nearly three weeks later. Upon receiving the roses, they didn't seem like they would actually last that long or bloom as beautifully as they did. I was happily proven wrong. Needless to say, my mom loved the bouquet. 

Tache Chocolate Making Class

The Piping Techniques class left my friend and I desiring another creative outlet. Enter the chocolate making class at Tache Artisan Chocolate. We would be learning how to make grignotines and chocolate molds. Upon hearing grignotines, I thought: wow, we must getting every penny's worth in the class. Turns out grignotine is a fancy way of describing a topping laden chocolate disc. We were given plastic baggies containing melted chocolate and were instructed to pipe out shapes onto wax paper. Subsequently we  added toppings. There was a whole assortment of toppings ranging from tea leaves to nuts to various spices. I recall asking myself why I was paying someone to show me how to pipe a chocolate disc and coat it with toppings. Again, a technique I could have come across on YouTube. We then moved on to making chocolate molds. After choosing our respective molds, I went with the wise owl, we coated the bottom with glitter, colored chocolate, then dark chocolate from a giant tempering machine. Yes, we spent an hour and a half and paid someone to "teach" us how to make chocolate discs and fill molds with chocolate from a machine. Wish the wise owl would have told me earlier that I was wasting my time. 

After watching movies like Chocolat and Romantics Anonymous, I thought we would be learning to temper chocolate on a marble slab, learning about the differences in chocolate percentage, and creating exciting truffle flavors. Sigh, what a disappointment. I would only recommend this class to someone looking to have a good time playing with chocolate, i.e., a child. Would consider taking another class if more challenging techniques were to be taught. 

Inside the store.

Painting with chocolate and glitter. 

The finished product, which we got to take home.

Sugar Flower Cake Shop Piping Techniques Class

In an effort to get my creative juices flowing, I recently took a piping techniques class at Sugar Flower Cake Shop. Upon arriving, each hopeful soon-to-be piping expert was handed a laminated practice piping sheet along with a pastry bag and tip. The lead instructor came around to each table to demonstrate the proper way of piping stars, shells, rosettes, rope borders, scrolls, and dots. After sufficiently practicing each piping technique, each student was given a 4x4" cake. We all set about coating the cake with pre-made butter cream; a lengthy process which involved numerous rounds of coating with butter cream and refrigerating in order to obtain a uniformly square shape. After several layers of butter cream, we were finally ready to practice our newly acquired piping skills on a three dimensional object. We all maniacally set off, all hopeful that our natural talent would be somewhat comparable to that of Sylvia Weinstock. Alas, none of us turned out to be the next Sylvia. However, with lots and lots of practice, we all very well could be on our way to cake stardom. Overstatement of the year.  

Finished cakes in the studio. 

We got to bring our cakes home. Proud of my first attempt at piping. 

In reviewing the class itself, I would not return to take another class at Sugar Flower Cake Shop. The assistants were not very helpful when asked to demonstrate or correct our piping technique. Often we were shown a different method from what the lead instructor demonstrated. The class would have been a lot better if there were fewer students so that each student could get adequate individual attention. Cake sizes were too small to get a real feel of piping and little instruction was given on how to make the cake perfectly square and smooth. Germaphobes beware. Butter cream initially used to practice piping techniques was scraped off the boards and put back in the original vat of butter cream, to then be reused on each cake. I'll be sticking to YouTube for further piping instructions.