Elevate Your Work

Embellishing a cookie or 200 with meticulous detail can be back-breaking work.  If you’ve ever written, swirled, dotted or piped intricacies on a 3 inch edible canvas, you know what I’m talking about.

You might, if you’re anything like me, work standing, not sitting.  Standing, leaning, bending, hunching sometimes for hours on end.

I NEVER sit while decorating cookies.  First of all, I can’t outline a cookie to save my life while sitting.  My counters are higher than most kitchen counters.  My torso is short and my legs are long, so when I sit, that counter is practically at the same level as my neck.  Definitely not a good angle from which to work.

Years ago, an accomplished wedding cake designer told me she never lets her employees sit while working.  With a packed daily production schedule, she was concerned with employing assistants displaying deft skills and record-breaking finishing times.  Allowing workers to sit, she discovered, made them too comfortable, extinguishing the spring in their pastry bag wielding steps.

So, the question becomes how to work effiiciently and quickly, without becoming the next Hunchback of Notre Dame?

Answer:  Cake turntable, or, as J calls it, the twirly thing.

It’s not just for frosting cakes.  By balancing your tray of cookies on the turntable you can stand, bend from the waist, as opposed to hunching over, and, because it twirls, you don’t have to reach unnaturally over to that cookie in the far left hand corner of the tray.  Twirling the tray means you’re less likely to drop something on a freshly flooded cookie, because you’ve easily turned it out of the way.

If you don’t have a turntable, think about investing in one.  Your straighter back and your un-huched shoulders will thank you.  So will your cookies.