Behind the Scenes... MY 10 YEAR LOVE HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH RED VELVET CAKE STORY BY ANGEL SCHIFFER AT BITTERSWEET BAKERY
When I first started Bittersweet I had a lot of silly ideas, which I suppose happens when you open a business at the wise old age of 20. The first, and dumbest, idea that I had was that I wanted everything to be prepared over an open flame. I dont know where I decided the heat source would produce a superior product but I was very anti-microwave and I very much did not think through how I’d even reheat my lunch. Thankfully, on day one of business my five foot two mother wobbled through our doors with the largest microwave that the local Walmart carried. She placed it in the corner of my kitchen, on top of the state of the art outdoor furniture I was using as bakery equipment, and my plan to prepare everything over a flame was promptly thrown out. The second idea I had was that I would create a new flavor of cupcake every single day in an attempt to not repeat the same flavor twice, and things got weird. Obviously, we rode on the easy ones like lemon paired with literally
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every fruit known to mankind because that’s the beauty of lemon. Or even creating a flavor and then flipping the elements, one day it’s chocolate cake with orange buttercream, the next it’s orange cake with chocolate buttercream and so on and so forth. Realistically, this could only last so long - and while this idea of mine was stupid and not entirely planned well, it did teach me how to pair flavors and build recipes. To keep it going as long as I could, I would gain inspiration from everything around me. Fine dining wasn’t exactly accessible because 1) I lived in Corsicana, Texas and 2) I was a 20 year old. So, when I did go out I would take photos of not just the dessert menu, but cocktail menus too. I would walk the cereal and ice cream aisles seeing what was popular, what was seasonal, and what lingered on the shelf a little too long. I’d even get inspired picking up a coffee, which recently happened to me when I visited Savannah, happened to order a lavender mocha and had my world and taste buds flipped on their head! Ten years later it’s rare that a flavor combination will
