Cakes, Bakes and Things You can Take!

   In my last post, I talked about how important it is to me and my bakery partner/husband that our bakery offer real food made with real ingredients by us in our shop. Today I thought I would tell you a little bit about what we plan to actually offer in our shop.

One of our Custom Cakes

   Since the Frosted Fox Cake Shop is a cake shop, our main focus is, of course, cake! We aim to provide delicious and beautiful custom cakes for weddings, birthdays, showers, graduations, retirements and any other festivity where a cake would be appreciated (hint: all of them). We have decided to offer a wide range of cake flavors, filling options and icing varieties which are sure to please everybody. We'll have classics like chocolate cake, red velvet, white cake, yellow cake and carrot. We will also have more unusual options like apple, banana, pumpkin and peanut butter. For our current list of flavors options you can check out our website www.frostedfoxcakeshop.com. I promise I will write a post soon about what designing and making a custom cake is like, but for now, I'm going to try to stay focused on tell you about the rest of our shop's offerings.
If you want to see some photos of cakes I've made, check out this link for our custom cakes.

Pumpkin cupcake with cinnamon cream
cheese icing

   I wish I could have birthday cake everyday, but sadly, that's not how life usually pans out. So, for the other 364 days a year, we wanted to offer a wider variety of smaller treats. Little sweets that don't require a special occasion. Staying with the cake theme for a moment, we'll have cupcakes as well as some delicious smaller cakes that will be ready to pick up without having to place an order ahead of time. We'll offer delicious classic combinations like chocolate mousse cake, yellow cake with chocolate icing, red velvet with cream cheese and lemon cake with cream cheese icing. We'll also cycle in different combinations as specials. How will we come up with some of our options? We'll poll our friends, family and customers! I'm envisioning some kind of bracket system, or perhaps a prize for best suggestion.

A test batch of Sean's favorite
cookies, mmm&mmm's

   Even though cakes are my passion, it was really important to us that our shop have options for our neighbors to come in every day just to get a nibble to satisfy their sweet tooth. We wanted to offer more than just cakes and cupcakes, so we decided we would offer a line of delicious, family friendly cookies, brownies and bars. Of course, we had to offer chocolate chip cookies which are my personal favorite. There's also a super chocolatey double chocolate chip cookie which always seems to disappear from our kitchen whenever we make them. We have a killer raspberry bar that's topped with our own granola which has already proven to be a fan favorite. There are a lot too many choices to go into here, but you can check out our full list of cookies and bars here.  Thirsty? We will be offering simple coffee options, teas and a range of other beverages perfect with a cookie, brownie or cupcake.
   So that's what we are starting with. I'm hopeful we can expand our menu as our business grows. There are a lot of baked goods that we will be offering as rotating specials that will hopefully become staples over time. We will be focusing primarily on sweet items, at least to start. For my next post, I'll be talking about the aesthetic choices one is faced with when opening a bakery. From the look of our cakes to the style of the shop!

From Scratch Attack!

     So, last time I talked about the not-so glamorous world of permits and licenses. This time, I wanted to talk about something more fun! The wonderful thing about opening your own cake shop is that you get to decide what you're going to bake, how you're going to bake it and what it's going to look like. So let's talk about that! Starting with the "how."

Delicious, from-scratch cookie dough... my Achilles heel!

     For me, one of the most important things about opening my bakery is that I want everything to be made from scratch by a real person. Seems pretty obvious, right? Real butter, real sugar, real flour, real lemons and real apples means really good pastry. But it's not that simple.  Have you ever noticed how most supermarket icing tastes the same no matter where you go? Or that the "Fresh-baked" chocolate chip cookie you are eating has a slightly funny, chemical taste to it? Well, sadly it's because so many places use mixes, batters and icings that are full of preservatives.  I mean, I get it, it's cheaper, easier and requires less skill, but they are deceiving customers into believing that their baked goods are homemade.  Even though they advertise items as "fresh baked" at the store, there is a high probability that what they are baking was made at a factory months ago with a long list of chemicals as its ingredients.
   We know it's tough out there for a small, family owned business. The food industry is already notoriously unreliable and the profit margin is razor thin. Bakeries are getting crowded out by supermarkets every day. So, why am I crazy enough to open a bakery?

This is my life motto.

   It's because I am betting that there are enough people in our wonderful city that value real food by real people to keep our doors open. For my husband and me, making our sweets from scratch is non-negotiable. Now, this may mean that our prices can't be the lowest (have you seen the cost of eggs lately?) but we know that they correlate to a higher quality sweet than if we went the cheaper route. Plus, if you're going to treat yourself, shouldn't you make sure that treat is great?
   Now, to prove we are not total Luddites, we do use mixers and fondant rollers, but that's about as high-tech as we get for equipment.  While I have great respect for people out there whipping their meringue by hand, I just don't have the Popeye arms to make that happen! Also, I know that rolling out pie dough and sheets of fondant by hand is a great upper body work out, I'm simply too short to get any good leverage over those doughs! I hope you'll forgive us for those little shortcuts, but if you've ever owned a stand mixer or a Cuisinart, you know what a time-saver they can be! Have you seen that video of automated cake decorating robots? It's kinda neat, but frankly, they just don't look that good. Wouldn't you rather have your cake made by a real person than some giant robot arm without an eye for detail (or any eyes at all)? Here it is for you to see, yes it's neat, no I wouldn't want it icing my birthday cake.

    So we have figured out how we're going to bake (the old fashioned way with the added help of some basic equipment) but what are we going to bake? I'll cover that on my next blog post.

"Adventures in Permitting" or "When Will You be Open?"

Me when people ask me when we will be open....

So, this is the big question. Everyday I have friends, family, neighbors and strangers asking me "How's the bakery coming?" and "When will it be open?" Sadly, I still don't have a concrete answer. I really truly wish I did.  If you've ever seen the movie The money pit then you'll recognize the refrain "two weeks." That's how I feel right now (only for me its 2 months). It sounds naive to say that this project is taking me longer than I expected, but it is. It turns out that when you decide to open your own business (and particularly when you want to make sure all the proper paper work/permits/licenses are accounted for) it takes a long time!

  We've encountered a few things that have slowed us down, I'm sure there will be more, but this is what's happened so far.  The first thing we needed to do was to gain a zoning variance. Now, in Philadelphia, what this means is that our shop wasn't originally zoned for food production, just for general retail. We needed to get a variance that would allow us to set up what is technically something of a take out restaurant to allow for food production and sales. In order to get that variance, the most important step is getting support from the community, then you take that letter of support to a zoning hearing and you plead your case.
   Sounds pretty easy, right? Not quite, you can get turned down for the variance if the neighborhood doesn't support you or if you aren't prepared to plead your case.  I had it from some good sources that we would probably get the variance, but it wasn't a guarantee. Still, we loved the little store front we found so much that we were willing to take a gamble on getting the variance. You also need a lawyer to represent you and you need to file a bunch of stuff in order to get a rejection from the zoning board before you can appeal and try to get your variance. Unfortunately, all of this takes time and all of that time is measured in the dreaded "business days" as in, "we will get back to in 30 business days." So, this was several months of anxiously awaiting what the community and the zoning board would say.
  The great news is that it all went really well! We gained community support and were successfully granted our zoning variance. Thankfully we have a great design team that put together a beautiful set of plans and a great lawyer who was super thorough and organized! As of early April, we had officially completed the first step of opening our shop. The next step was getting health department plan approved by the city's health department.

I always picture the health inspector from Ratatouille!

  More paperwork. For this part, we supplied the health department with all of our plans for our buildout. This included every last detail down to the type of paint we intend to us. We also supplied them with the spec. sheets for our equipment, our menu list, our ingredients and recipes and our sanitation plan. Luckily, Sean is an expert on sanitation and we both recently brushed up on our food safety certification with straight A's! Now, it may sound like I am complaining about this process, but it's really important, the last thing you want to do is start construction only to find out that your plans aren't up to the health code and you need to re-arrange all your plumbing or something like that! It's much better to be able to make changes on paper than to have to rip-out equipment and start over! Also, great news, we were approved without having to make any major changes! Thanks City of Philadelphia Department of Health!
  Once that step was complete, we could move on to the next stage of paperwork and permits. This is where we are now. We have our awesome contractor selected and he's working hard to get all the building/plumbing/electrical permits in to the city so that we can make sure all our construction is safe and sound! Hopefully, those will arrive in the next few days and we can start working on the space itself! When that day comes, I will probably run around my house screaming with joy and then eat about 10 celebratory chocolate chip cookies!

Me celebrating work starting on the space!

  From there, it will hopefully just be a few short weeks before work is done, equipment is in, the place is sparkling clean and we can do our final health inspection with the city.  As important as all the proper permitting and licensing is, I really just want to get into my kitchen and bake! In the mean time, we are testing recipes at home, making cakes for friends and family, and working on the back-office type stuff. Employee handbooks, uniforms, photo albums, websites and anything else a business owner has to do in order to allow them operate a successful business.
  So, if you're thinking of opening a bakery business, be prepared for a lot to time and energy spent outside of the kitchen before you can even get into your kitchen! Also, never give anyone an estimate of when you will be open, because you may have to eat your words over again.

Introducing Jennifer and Sean

The Frosted Fox Cake Shop was founded by me, Jennifer, and my husband, Sean, in 2015. Our shop is located at 6511 Germantown Ave, Philadelphia, PA, 19119. I thought you might like to learn a little about us and what we hope to do with our shop.

   I was born and raised in Philadelphia. Sean is originally from Miami. We met at the Culinary Institute of America on the first day of classes in 2006. We actually met during one of those ice breaker activities that are usually kind of forced. Sean was attending school to learn about fine dining and I went because I dreamed of opening my own cake shop one day. Soon enough, we were spending all of our free time together and by the end of culinary school, we were all set to move to Philadelphia together. Like a lot of culinary couples, we envisioned a delicious future together and hoped to own our own bakery, cafe or restaurant!

Sean and Me on the day I graduated Culinary School

   Once we moved to Philadelphia in 2008, Sean started working for some corporate catering companies. They focused on high quality food on a large scale. Imagine the Pixar or Google campus cafeterias and that's a pretty good picture of what he was doing. I started working for a bakery in my neighborhood and was able to start decorating cookies, cupcakes and, my favorite, cakes! Eventually, I even became the pastry chef, which meant that I had a lot of responsibilities to make sure the shop ran smoothly.

    Sean and I got married in 2010 and we made sure there was an impossibly huge amount of food at the wedding. I was thrilled to make my own wedding cake! It was around this time that foxes began to enter our life as a recurring motif. We went to see Fantastic Mr. Fox and I became pretty obsessed with it. The groom's cake I made for Sean and our wedding cake featured a pair of foxes and we even named two of our pets after characters in the movie. I started collecting pieces that featured foxes and other woodland creatures for our home.

Photos of our wedding from Philadelphia Brides

    About a year ago, Sean and I started dreaming of our bakery in a more tangible way than ever before. With the support of our families, we decided it was time to start making it happen. I left my job (I was working as a chocolatier with John and Kira's) and started testing recipes out of our home. Now, we are on the brink of making our shop a reality.  We have a storefront, our recipes and our game plan. Now, we just have to make everything a reality.  

   Our dream shop will feature our wedding and specialty cakes as its main focus. While cakes are the focus, we will also offer a line of cookies, bars and other small baked goods for our local customers who are looking for great neighborhood options.  We want our shop to be a nice place to relax, watch us decorate and connect with others. We want our desserts to bring people together by wowing them visually and then thrilling their tastebuds. Authenticity and quality are important to us. We make all of our items from scratch with high quality ingredients. Everything is decorated by hand, by a real person. We want to offer people a place where they can imagine their dream cake, work with our team, and see that dream become a reality, just like our bakery will be a dream come true for us.

Our Storefront at 6511 Germantown Ave, Philadelphia PA 19119

   We don't have an opening date yet, as this process is quite involved and so many aspects of it are out of our hands. For now, check back in with us here and on our website, www.frostedfoxcakeshop.com for updates on our progress. 

Introducing the Frosted Fox on the Prowl

Welcome to the official blog of The Frosted Fox Cake Shop! I'm Jennifer and I own the Frosted Fox along with my husband, Sean. Opening a bakery that specializes in cakes has been my dream ever since I was a little girl. I am extremely excited to be able to turn this dream into reality thanks to my incredibly supportive family and friends. What makes this even better is being able to open our shop​ in Mt. Airy, just a few blocks away from where I grew up and where we now live, in Germantown. For those of you who don't know the area, both neighborhoods are in Northwest Philadelphia, a wonderful city for food and culture. Please check out our website (frostedfoxcakeshop.com) for more specific information about our shop, our products and our photos!

   With this blog, I hope to be able to share information about our shop. Things like events and specials as well as what we're learning about running a small business. I also want to share information about the cakes we are making and showcase our favorite new pieces. I hope to also share some of my decorating and baking knowledge with you through photo and video tutorials. 

   My hope is that this blog will provide insight into the crazy life of running and working in an artisan cake bakery.  The topics won't be limited to cake decorating, but of course that will be a popular topic. The blog will be pretty informal, but I will be working hard to keep it entertaining and informative. If you prefer your information in small bites, you can follow us on facebook for quick snippets about what is happening in our shop. You can also follow us on instagram to see more photos of our work and our shop life.

   Well, now that we have the housekeeping out of the way, we can start into the real meat of what we want to do here. Check back for our first REAL post where I'll introduce myself and my husband and what we are hoping to achieve with our bakery!