Guy Allan Davis noticed that most of the professional
educational video courses on cooking, baking, and dessert creation are filmed
in ultra-expensive, million dollar kitchens with polished stainless steel counters,
multiple sinks, and several double ovens. In reality, you do not need a kitchen
like this to accomplish your goals of learning to create delicious desserts. In
fact, many popular chefs have started in the crushed confines of very tiny
kitchens.
What you do need instead is to analyze your space and make sure
that you prepare it for your baking and decorating activities. You will
probably need to delineate the area where you will be decorating your desserts.
You also need to figure out where you are going to keep your appliances, both
big and small. The goal is for you to be able to access them quickly,
conveniently, and efficiently. You also need to identify how much counter space
you will need and adopt habits that will allow you to have the space available
and uncluttered.
In addition to typical appliances such as a refrigerator, an
oven, a stovetop, and a freezer, you will also need a food processor for
chopping nuts and other ingredients into powders, a spice or coffee grinder,
and a mixer. Dessert preparation usually has two stages. The first stage is
baking and the second one is decorating. Because decorating largely takes place
after baking is over, you can use the same space for both. At the same time,
you can’t just work anywhere where you can place your cake down. You need room
and access to your decorating tools, supplies, frostings, and embellishments.
If you have a cake board, place it in the middle of your
workstation to get an idea of how much space it will take. If you don’t own
accessories such as a turntable or a cake board, place a baking pan to get a
rough idea of how much space a cake will take and how much space you will have
left for your appliances. If you don’t have enough room in one part of your
kitchen, you need to become creative and either start using an island with
wheels or find a place that will have enough space for a cake and decorating
supplies. The space that you choose for decorating does not necessarily have to
be exclusive to decorating; it just needs to be your base during the process.
This means that it is fine if you have to shuffle around and move certain
things and items in your kitchen. You can place them back when you are done
just like Guy Allan Davis would do.
