Chicago
Wow! What a crazy weekend!About 2 weeks ago, we were asked to provide a sick amount of goodies for a convention we were already planning to attend… in CHICAGO! A whirlwind of planning, swearing, and baking ensued, resulting in 300 or so decorated cookies, 560 servings of cake (4 tired cakes of various heights), 200 mini cupcakes, and 1500 of our gourmet cookies.
Packing the delivery truck was an adventure. We knew we were fine to deliver cakes anywhere in the city / statewide or whatever, but the idea of driving SEVERAL cakes (and other items!) From the NW suburbs all the way to Chicago.. well, I love a challenge, so I guess I’m not complaining too hard. Luckily, my husband has built me some VERY sturdy cake stands & internal structural supports. I’m pleased to report that the cakes (and everything else!) made it to Chicago with no problems!
So we packed at about 4or 5 am and were on the road about an hour and a half later. Man, I hate long road trips, but this seemed to go a little faster than usual - we were pretty excited about the weekend ahead! After about 8-9 hours of driving/making obligatory cheese shopping stops, etc, we arrived at the hotel.
Will spare you the non-cake related details of the weekend, and fast forward to the Saturday night. We had 2 hours to set up our sweets table, which was the only food being served with a HUGE event - it was sort of like a big wine tasting, but much more hardcore.
The doors opened to let 300 or so people in and.. Wow. What a feeding frenzy! My husband likened the whole thing to Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. Not sure I like hearing my cakes referred to as “chum”, but whatever! Luckily, I had 1 other person with me behind the tables helping to cut/serve cake. Note to self: I can handle cutting and serving 2 cakes on my own, easily… but 4 cakes and swarms of people is a bit too much for one person!
This was all for an event I’d been to twice before, and I knew a good amount of the people there.. but I was a little shocked to see how different the event was from my new point of view. I met WAY more people than I had before. Between this and some other recent experiences, I’m starting to think that cake & sweets is a GREAT way to make friends!
The organizers did an AMAZING job, both on the event I worked at, and the whole weekend in general. What a party! Can’t wait till next year.. Especially considering I’ll have more notice for baked goodies!
