Sierra
Baruh
June 13, 2018
Final tPOL Video:
June 13, 2018
The three people I am most thankful for are actually pretty much the only three people I really worked with on a daily basis. The first person is Sarah, the head baker at the Cake Pop Shop. She ended up moving halfway through my internship but I learned so much from her in the couple of weeks that I did work with her. She had kind of grown with the business and was so knowledgeable about cake pops and baking all together. She had so many fun stories to share and was just a really fun person to be around. Next is Jill, who started at the Cake Pop Shop one week after me. She became the new head baker and we had a lot of fun as well. My internship changed once Sarah left, and at first, I was really worried. While we did have some road bumps because we both were new, we had a lot of fun in the end. The last person that I am really thankful for at my internship is Chelsea. Chelsea works the front of the store and she is honestly the happiest and most positive person I have ever met in my life. Every day she would come in with a smile on her face so excited to see us and hear about how our day was going so far. She isn't a baker herself but she absolutely LOVES cake pops. Every time we would bring an order out to the front for her to package she would get so excited telling us how cute they were and how talented we all were. It made me feel really good being there knowing that the work I was doing was very appreciated.
June 8, 2018
While I don't think that I will be going into the field in the future, it has been an eye-opening experience. I've gotten to see behind the scenes of a small business and what it takes to keep it running. There are crazy customers, cake pops that won't seem to stay on their sticks, and lots of people in a very small space. Yet, with the right group of people, this all runs smoothly. It has been really interesting to see the separation between the manager and the girls who work front of the store from the baker in the back. I always thought that everyone would just kind of do everything, but it is really separated. In the back, we really don't hear anything about customers or sales or really anything going on until the order is placed, the deposit is paid, and the invoice goes up on the fridge for us to get started on.
June 6, 2018
June 1, 2018
My internship really hasn't changed what I think I will be doing in my career. I am going to school for nursing and always have just thought of baking as a fun hobby to do in my free time. I will still be doing nursing but I have thought about the possibility of working in a bakery while in college. Another possibility that I have thought of during internship is, far far down the road, opening my own bakery.
There haven't been too many "problems" at my internship. Everyone that I work with is super creative and they've been really awesome at coming up with solutions when anything comes up. The only "aha" moment that I could think of is when we are creating new cake pop designs. Sometimes the customers come to us with really specific wants, thinking that we can literally recreate any picture that they find online. There have been a couple of different designs that we have had to think hard about. The first "aha" moment we had was trying to come up with how to create an elephant cake pop. We didn't know what to use for the legs and the trunk because everything we tried to use was too heavy and subsequently fell off. After thinking about it for a little while we realized we could use the base of candy corns to create the legs and broken pretzels as the trunks. They ended up being super cute!
May 30, 2018
The skill that I have used the most at my externship is group work and the ability to collaborate well. My externship is in a bakery that is really really small. Some days, there are up to five people crammed in the back of the kitchen. You are always in someone's way and always have someone in your way. I have found that the ability to collaborate well with others has been really valuable. Since it is such a small space, being able to communicate what you need and being able to respect other people's space is very important. My externship really hasn't been similar to any projects that I have done in school. The only similarity that jumps out at me is group work. Being in the bakery is like constantly being part of a group project. We all work together and bounce ideas off of each other to help create the best work possible.
May 25, 2018
Here I am making unicorn cake pops. They are funfetti chocolate cake pops double dipped in a pale pink frosting. After dipping it for the second time, I added two chocolate ears, a chocolate horn that was covered in gold glitter, and three flowers made out of fondant.
May 23, 2018
I haven't come across too many challenges in my externship. I have been really lucky to enjoy mine so much and that I have been able to learn so many new things in only a week. One of the only small challenges that I can think of is learning the proper way to make cake pops. The first couple that I made fell into the chocolate, or the chocolate dripped down the stick a lot. Luckily, my internship site has a lot of interns and so my mentor is very supportive of me and my learning. My mentor and co-workers do their best to show me how to make all of the different cake pops that they offer and whenever they are doing something new they make sure to show me how to do it also.
May 18, 2018
Part Two
Part One
May 16, 2018
I am doing my internship at the San Diego Cake Pop shop. So far it has been really awesome and I am really looking forward to the month ahead! I don't have a project plan yet, but so far, my responsibilities will include coming up with new unique cake pop flavors and assisting with decorating the hundreds of cake pops that go out each week and decorating the layer cakes that go out each week. I am nervous about learning all of the different techniques that are involved with making and decorating cake pops. During my first day alone, I gained many very useful and valuable skills. I learned about all of the different tools they use and how to use each of them properly. I also learned the perfect proportions of cake and frosting and how to roll the perfect cake pop.
