The Clouds in Heaven MUST be Made of Icing...

I don't know if you have ever seen this, but if you ever get a chance to look at a batch of buttercream icing swirling around in a mixer, do it. It is the most mesmerizing, brilliant, perfect cloud of silkiness that you will ever see. The longer it mixes, the smoother it gets and the sheen becomes the most perfect and dazzling luster... It is almost a quite personal experience!

Today's lesson is about sharing. So many people come into our shop and see the size of our portions and think to themselves... "I could never ever eat that entire brownie!" Let me give you a hint... These things were made to share! Sharing is one of the gestures that shows the most love towards your friends and family! Sharing is the easiest way to say, "Hey. I know we are friends and I know you don't mind eating after me because we are just that close." And, most importantly, sharing immediately cuts the amount of calories consumed in half, so it makes it OK to eat! (And, the more friends you bring, the more you can share, and the less calories - it is a very simple equation.)

So, next time you eye one of the delicious sweets on the counter, don't let your inhibitions hold you back. Just turn around, tell your friend to share it with you and grab a fork! (It is also a very easy way to make a new friend.... )

Have a sweet day - and don't forget the Sweet Word for this week is Cheesecake! We will see you all soon!

Wow - what a weekend! It started THURSDAY and did not come to an end until a long, long Sunday was over.

Thursday, we made a batch of the "secret" yummy goodies that we were recently FDA inspected for. They were delicious, but the consistency was off just a little bit. So, back to the drawing board! The soup and salad was super super busy - topping off another record breaking week! (That's two in a row!)

Friday was, in a word, CRAZY. It should have been an indicator to how insane Saturday would be but we were too busy to notice!

Saturday... Phew, just thinking about it makes me sigh and feel absolutely exhausted! We had about 20 cake orders to fill and a big catering event at Trenton Hall on Antique Alley in West Monroe. One big wedding cake, tiered birthday cakes, shower cakes, and anniversary cakes. It was a mad house in here! Every flat surface and anything that would stand still long enough was holding a cake. In fact, Saturday was so busy that it spilled over into Sunday and we had to finish 6 of our cakes on Sunday.

Today was another busy, manic, and fast Monday. Two cake orders. One was three cakes for the Habitat for Humanity. They are dedicating the three houses they just finished builing tonight and we did cakes for each family that would be moving in. Then we did a marbled chocolate cake with fudge icing for a birthday. Talk about delicious!

We also introduced a new kind of cupcake today: The Treasure Chest cupcake. It's a cupcake with a sweet surprise inside! Today's versious:

1. An exquisite chocolate cupcake with cream cheese filling and cream cheese frosting, dubbed the "Make Your Monday Better Cupcake"
2. The Reese's Surprise: chocolate cupcake with peanut butter chips inside and peanut butter frosting, drizzled with chocolate and topped off with a Reese's Peanut Butter cup
3. The Original - a white cupcake with a sweet surprise inside topped with chocolate frosting. It could be anything in there - a Hershey's kiss, M&M's, Snickers.... You never know! That's part of the surprise.

Word to the wise - if you come in and ask for a Treasure Chest cupcake, make sure to have us warm it up for you so the surprise will be ooey, gooey and that much more titillating!

One last thing - The Sweet Word of the Day!

Cheesecake!

Come in, get your lunch and tell us you read this Sweet Word on our blog and you will get a free treat and get your name in a drawing for weekly prizes!

Sweet Word of the Day

Hey Hey Hey - Watch for the Sweet Word of the Day!

Do you like freebies and coupons? Then this is the place to be!

At the end of every blog, we will post a Sweet Word that is your ticket to free sweet treats, delectable deals and a delicious weekly drawing that could win you anything from a free lunch to coupons for cakes!

Remember to come in, grab your quick, delicious and easy salad, and tell us you read our Sweet Word! It's that easy! Come on people - there is no small print here! Only two simple rules:

1. You have to eat something.
2. You have to know the Sweet Word.

This week's sweet word is "CreamPuff." I mean, how decadent does this look?



This is a piece of choux pastry, which is just a fancy term for a light, hollow puff, that is filled with delicious cream and sometimes topped with chocolate drizzle. DELISH.

So, come tell us that you read about cream puffs on our blogspot today! (This word will no longer be valid after Friday, August 21nd so don't wait until then!)

FYI - Strawberry cupcakes. Warm. Tender. Moist. Straight out of the oven. Come and get it folks!

Skye this is Not a Rock Concert and Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!

We are going to start putting up a SECRET WORD of the WEEK!  It will be placed at the bottom of this blog and if you are in the area come in for lunch and let us know what the secret word is and we'll have a Special Treat for Yall!  

Hey Yall!  This is Anna :) I'm going to be blogging today. Well for starters this Tuesday was filled with giggles and way too much fun.  Mrs. Tammy baked all day!  And of course the amazing hot brownies were irresistable ( especially with cream cheese icing ! ).  Today everyone was a bit tired.  Betsy came in late this morning (she thought Tuesday would be the day :) ) and Skye and Mrs. Tammy and myself got things going until she got there.  The bar was completely torn apart from yesterdays massive crowd.  I have mondays off so I'm not really sure what happened, but I sure did see the after math and it was not pretty.  So we all got on filling up the salad bar and getting things cut up and baked for that and then we got right into our usual routine of Tammy baking while we all go behind her and put up cakes and wash pans and what ever else needs to be done.  

Skye was very tired today and very silly.  Before the day ended she was long gone as far as sanity stands.  The slide to insanity started with us discussing Mrs. Tammy's new daughter in laws need to use a "bump it" (hair product that makes your hair "poof") and how I don't need a bump it because I can execute the poof naturally .. which then ended with Skye dancing around like she was a a rock concert... which brought me to yell, "Hey Skye, This is not a rock concert! "  I do believe when people that are as close as we all are work together it lends itself to some pretty random and funny situations.  Skye is also driving around a big Armada (which is as unusual equivalent to a Spanish Armada Ship! ) This thing is HUGE.  So people of the town...you have been warned!  Watch out, Skye is lose on the roads and she is armed and loaded!  And pens that do not write beware! Skye will throw you half way across the room without any notice of whats about to happen!  (Skye got a little pen throwing happy today)

Along with Mrs. Tammy singing Jesse's Girl ... because well I got a boyfriend and his name is Jesse and of course Mrs. Lee was in and asked if they were making fun of me...and of course they were ... but as Mrs. Lee said we all do deal it out pretty evenly ...so it will soon be someone else's turn :) Watch out Yall... I'm waiting for my turn!..

Jeremy ( Betsy's cousin) came in today to get some lunch and after he successfully made it down the salad bar without spilling a thing ... gets ready to walk off to go sit on the "boys side" (the coffeeshop) and his bowl of soup split in half and potato soup went everywhere! Needless to say Betsy just walks over and says pick up what you can with your hand and we'll get the rest :) ... Crisis averted!  We mopped it up and went on about our day putting up cakes and cleaning dishes.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner will never sound the same to me... I might actually run in fear if I ever hear that phrase again.  Today right before we were getting ready to close we had a few red velvet cupcakes left over from earlier in the day and we were going to get rid of them ... and little did I know Skye had an evil plan for one said cupcake.  I was then sneak attacked by Skye!  She put me in a head lock and then shoved a cupcake in my face!  ... Lots of cream cheese icing right in the face... But Hey! I can't really complain atleast it was Delicious!

That about sums up our day... It was full of work, play, and friends.  Just another day at the Soup, Salad, and Sweets Shop.  Have A Sweet Day Yall, Bonana-Anna :)

SECRET WORD = CREAMPUFF (VALID THROUGH AUGUST 21ST)

Also Look for Trivia to come! 

Just another manic Monday

Hi it's Tammy. I get to write today. Skye's looking at a truck. She's becoming a real West Monroe girl now. WOW! It's Monday. We had a very busy weekend, a wedding cake, 150 cupcakes, a lot of birthday cakes, 25 for a party at the store and My new daughter-in-law's graduation from ULM. So much to do. The FDA came today for an inspection, for us to start manufacturing. We have a company looking at us to start making a" secret "product for them. All went well. School started back this week, so we aren't sure how busy we'll be. I hope real busy. It helps pay the rent and we all have fun running around like we're crazy. oh yea, we are crazy. Have to go, we are going to MaMaw's for taco night.

Hey yall heres a picture from this morning and as Skye said, 8am is way to early to take pictures.



A cake I decorated today for Miss Hallie!! I cant wait to do her sisters cake Saturday, its going to be really cute too!!



Have a good day!!
- Betsy-

Picture Time & The End of the World.

8:30 in the morning is not the ideal time to take a picture of anyone. It is especially not a good time to take our picture and specifically today, since three of the four of us, for various reasons, did not get a good night of sleep last night.

But, nevertheless, we showed up with our makeup on and our pretty aprons so we could post our (Bestey's brother just threw a cookie at her...) smiling faces for you to see. (Betsey threw the cookie back at him and it flew in between me and the laptop.)

So here we are.

Left to right... Skye, Anna, Tammy, Betsey.



It took several times to get the picture just right. Betsey closed her eyes... then Tammy closed her eyes. Then I was leaned in too much and looked like a hunchback. Again, it was 8:30. Give us a break.

So, after I bragged on Mrs. Lee's committment to her standing 11:00 appointment with our salad bar, she did not show up today! This means that either A) the world is coming to an end today and we are not yet aware of it; or B) something really interesting happened sherriff's department and hopefully we will hear all about it tomorrow and have something interesting to post.

Yesterday afternoon, right in the middle of our lunch rush, the health department came in for their surprise "scheduled" inspection. After temping our soup and chicken salad, checking to make sure all the silverware was turned upside down in the containers and that the icing containters were 6 inches off the floor, we passed with flying colors. This came as no surprise to us considering we spend a considerable amount of time cleaning up after Tammy, whose ADD tends to cause her to conveniently "forget" that you have to wash the spatulas and icing comb after each use, lest we accidently spread bright red icing onto a beautiful white wedding cake.

Today was very busy for a Thursday. A customer came at 9:40 came for a dessert tray that we were supposed to have ready at 9:30 and we had actually forgotten about it. (Don't worry - we whipped it up in no time!) We ran out of our famous Baja Chicken soup before 12 o'clock. A group of local teachers who are getting ready for the new school year came in and were evidently ravenous after rearranging their bulletin boards and wiping clean their desks. Betsey decorated this beautiful birthday cake:



Anna cut her finger chopping celery for the salad bar. Anna also made the most delicious Oooey Goooey Brownies ever to come our of our oven! Oooey Goooeys are a very special kind of brownie with a cake base of various flavors (dark chocolate fudge, carrot, coconut, strawberry, french vanilla, red velvet and pineapple... these are some of the more favorite ones...) topped with a delicious and creamy cream cheese and powdered sugar filling. The best part is that they are big enough to share, and everyone knows the general rule states that anything you share with one or more persons has automatically half the calorie and sugar content. It's a pretty good deal if you ask me. The most delicious Oooey Goooey that came out today were the Coconut Oooey Goooeys topped with toasted coconut. They were so delicious and warm and decidedly ooey gooey that it was hard to just have one little nibble.

Due to my lack of sleep last night, and the fact that the dishes are done, I can officially call it a day. Tomorrow is bread pudding day and my day off. So I will report back to duty on Saturday with pictures of the wedding cakes for this weekend. Have a wonderful Thursday afternoon!!

As I compose this, Tammy is walking around with a grocery list. Here is her current thought process....

Crackers? Yes, we need crackers.
Oooh.. We need some tricked out name tags! I will go to Hobby Lobby and see what I can find.
How are we doing on mustard?
I've gotta get baking.
Do we have red velvet cupcakes?
What do we need for the dessert tray??
I like wallpaper, and doodlies. Can we put that in the blog?
Watch for the cop on Kiroli! There is a cop sitting behind the bushes now.
Oh.. Baked potatoes. I want to have baked potatoes.

Anna is looking at a tea magazine. Betsey is crumbling bacon. Oh, and I, Skye, am blogging. This is the life at Tammy's Soup, Salad and Sweets, or the dark side as we refer to it.



We work in one side of a family owned business, the other half of which is referred to as the boy's side. It is a coffeehouse. But this blog is about the girls. And introductions are in order:


Tammy - owner. Outgoing. Loud. Funny. 35 years of baking experience. Hairbrained (see above thought process). Can throw together a cake in about 15 seconds and it looks like it took an hour to create.


Betsey - owner's daughter. More like her father. Organized thought process. Clean.

Anna - cake decorator and Betsey's BFF. Artistic. Quiet. Likes to run.

Skye - doesn't really have a title except for the newly attained "blogger." I just work here. And you don't have to be crazy to work here, but it certainly helps.


So I bet you are wondering why we are blogging. The first and foremost reason is because we saw Julie&Julia yesterday and were inspired. Tammy tried to make us wear pearls and heels to work today. Ha. Rather than ruin our good jewelry with icing and jam our toes into uncomfortable shoes all day, we decided to join the world of blogging. Now, we can tell the free world what we do every day and how much fun we have and put pictures of the cakes we make. (Hey, a little free advertising never hurt anyone.) Maybe one day someone at the Food Network will read this blog and find our little shop to be interesting and make a show out of us. Let's start small.


Today is a pretty normal day. Here, a normal day looks much like this:

Arrive around 8 a.m.
8 - 10 a.m.: Set up salad bar. The salad bar is an every-day guarantee for income. Cakes are busy on the weekend and during the week we have salad. We chop cucumbers, make pasta salad, dice eggs, cook bacon, defend the bacon from the boys, and now, blog.
10:30 a.m.: The salad bar opens.
11:00 a.m.: Mrs. Lee arrives every day. We set our clocks by her.
11:15 - 12:15: Tammy bakes. We make cupcakes and brownies and ooey gooeys and lemon and key lime tarts; something warm and sweet to serve at lunch every day.
12:15 - 1:15: Lunch rush.
1:15 - 2:00: Business slows and we usually eat.
2:00: Salad bar closes.

Occassionally things happen that throw a wrench into this highly practiced and perfected schedule.

Ok. Everyday something happens. And that is what this blog is all about. So, if you want a peek behind the scenes at a busy bakery with a crazy owner... This is the place to find it. I will blog as often as possible. I hope you find it entertaining, enlightening, and enabling you to enjoy your normal, 9-5, stuck behind the desk all day in a cubicle job more. Some days, I would trade you in a heartbeat.

Hey, one way that blogging has already improved my life? It just got me out of doing dishes. (Yipeee!)