i so want to try my hand at wedding cakes, but i work 40 hours a week and have two kids i am sure i am not the only one in this position so please tell me how you find the time to make all these wonderful and beautiful cakes that i see here on CC???????? I know all the hours that go into the cakes so how do you work and take care of the kids and make the cakes with out going crazy or messing up the cakes? is there a trick to all this????? are there any tips???????

I work a 45 hr. week and have a 21 month old son. The only way I can do a cake is to plan ahead and work in the evening when he is sleeping. I bake the weekend before and freeze, make frosting one or two nights of the week (depending on how much I need), work on misc. decorations/fondant another night, and get my boxes and boards all set. Then usually on Friday evening I put it all together and decorate.

That is usually just for "regular" cakes. I love it but yes, it is time consuming. I made my first wedding cake last month and while I'm proud of it, it will be a LONG time (if ever) before I make one again. It was just WAY too time consuming and stressful for me. It took the fun out of it.

Oh yeah, and housework/laundry/meal preparation totally take a backseat the weeks I have a cake to work on!

I also work 40-50 hour weeks and have 2 kids. I'm on call for work 24 hours a day (even when I'm "off"). My DH is a firefighter, so he works 24 hour shifts. Even though I stay busy with cakes, I have found that it truly relaxes me--I am forced to concentrate on something other than work. When I have a bad day, I go home and bake

The secret is organization .... and you might want to break that "sleeping at night" habit! I went a year or so on 4 hours sleep a night when I had a full time job.

Anyway .... make icing ahead of time, 4 or 5 or 10 batches. Make any flowers ahead of time so they can air dry. Be sure you have your boards and boxes, cut-wrapped-and-ready.

For the baking, I do it two ways and it just depends on my mood. I may do all the baking in one night, saran wrapped and ready for icing the next day. OR ..... I will bake the 6" and the 10" on one night, crumb coat and ice them. Next day, bake the 14", crumb coat and ice. The 2nd way gives me a feeling of accomplishment. SOMETHING Is at the "DONE" stage!

When ready to decorate, I set up one of those Pampered Chef cooling racks with legs on the counter. I place my decorating bags (filled with icing), spatula, the tips I'll need, benchscraper, etc ... any small tools, on this rack. Since it's elevated, it actually gives you a little more counter space. If you dont' have an elevated rack, put your small tools on a tray or in a basket .... this makes it easier to clean and easier to move things out of the way.

I place sheets of wax paper (I buy the box of 12" wax paper sheets from Sam's) on the Pampered CHef rack and/or on the counter. I lay my spoons, spatula, scrapers, anything messy on these sheets. HELps with clean up afterward.

Just think in terms of assembly line production. The fewer moves you have to make, the faster you can get it done.

Since I live in the city of the Indy 500, I'm always fascinated with the pit crews and how they will study how to do something that saves them just 2 or 3 seconds. Sometimes that can mean the difference between winning or not. I try to adapt those kinds of techniques.

LOL at giving up that sleeping at night habbit!

I've only done one wedding cake. I don't work full time outside the home, but I do have 5 children from ages almost 5 years to 16 years and all the afterschool activities that go with that in addition to running two girl scout troops. I try and do a lot of my flower making a week or more in advance (because i'm so slow and it'll usually take me 2-3 days just to make all the flowers!) and making the frosting ahead of time is a huge time saver (more is better than less as I hate to have to mix up more frosting in the middle of decorating). I don't bake ahead of time though. I usually bake no more than 2 days before an event simply because I don't like to freeze my cakes. But 9PM to Mdn are my hours to generally get things done. Baking can be done while doing other things (like laundry, making dinner, working on homework, etc). I doubt I'll do another wedding cake anytime soon either though. It was kind of fun and great experience, but I like to be able to do things really well, and until my youngest is in school full time, I just don't have time to do that.....