Research, Research, Research

The holiday season was VERY busy. I got quite a bit of baking in as well as some more practice with frosting cookies! I learned how easy it is to make the clean frosted cookies you see on the fancy bakery sites :) Apparently all you have to do is outline the edge of the cookie with your frosting piped out of a decorating bag, and then use loose frosting or more piped frosting to fill it in. Man I felt dumb after reading that. I feel like I should have already know that >.< But hey it looks GREAT!

I wanted to share some lovely bakery sites that I have come across. I have discovered that pink and chocolate brown is very popular for bakeries : /

The People's Cake
All cakes, all the time! They have an amazing gallery of non-traditional cakes! What I really love, though, is the section of Groom Cakes :D The elephant is particularly cool.

Coco Cake Boutique Cupcakes
Here we have a good mix of cakes and cupcakes! I have found a lot of inspiration looking at the variety of piping techniques used for the frosting as well as the variety of flavor combinations. Make sure you check out the wedding cupcakes section!

Cake Central
Now THIS is a treasure trove of pictures. I have spent WAY too much time on this site. I doubt I could ever run out of ideas when I can just come to this site for 10 minutes.

I still haven't gotten started on building my website. The free time I anticipated over the holiday season ended up being eaten up by family things. However, I plan to do a little work each night. I'd like to have things rolling by Easter time in April!

Holiday Baking!

It's been a busy couple of weeks! Over a month has passed since I found my starting point for my start-up sweetery. I have formally begun work on the website and brand development.I have had a domain hosted for years but never really did anything with it. I am playing around with several content management systems to develop the website, specifically Joomla and Drupal. Both are free and open source but have a learning curve. I *can* program in html if needed but I am hoping for something a little less time consuming. I also found a CMS named Dotnetnuke that has a free edition as well as a dedicated site with skins and modules. The only downside is that most of them cost money and are not very editable. Unless I saw a skin that had the perfect colors and font I wanted, I would have to put a ton of time in to customize it. Might as well start from scratch!

I have been making the rounds of bakery sites on the net, looking at the various styles, noting layouts that I like, and generally just trying to get a concrete picture of what I want the site to look like. I have identified several things that are important to me for the site: A gallery for pictures of the merchandise; a calendar for upcoming special treats related to holidays (US and Japan); a links page to various vegan supply stores, vegan bakeries, personal fun links; and a section for this blog.I am really glad that I am not pressed for time and can leisurely draw out the site map.My full time job closes for Christmas on the 24th and does not reopen till January 3rd so I should have ample time to sit down and FOCUS!

On a fun note, I have been trying out some recipes!

Chocolate Crinkle Cookies

Espresso Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Peanut Apple Pretzel Drops

Mexican Chocolate Snickerdoodles

First day of searching

Well, I found a starting point very quickly. :) A bunch of links, all on one page, specifically for New Hampshire!
How to Start a Business in NH

As I am not sure when I will be actually moving, I am wondering how many steps I can actually do in the process. I have thought of my business name so now I have decided to design my logo. I have asked a friend for help but if I have to, I will pay someone. I have decided to use the colors pink and chocolate. Once I nail down the logo, I will flesh out this blog. Sounds so easy right? :) I wish I could draw or at least had access to an image editing software. I don't really like to have to ask someone else for things. It won't be just the logo, I will need help designing the layout for the website. I plan to do as much as I can on my own though.

So in looking over the page for How to Start a Business in NH, I immediately saw what I need to do, like, tomorrow. Trademark my bakery name! Luckily it appears that I won't be having a lot of competition in New Hampshire. Coupled with the fact that I will be a totally vegan bakery, I should have that niche cornered.

I'll give more information as I start through the trademark process :)

And so begins my journey...

I have started this blog to document my journey towards opening a bakery. I am moving to New Hampshire in 2010 and plan to start an in home bakery while I work. I honestly haven't the first clue how to go about opening a bakery or even where to start so I plan to document my search for knowledge and share what I find in this blog!

Creating this blog was my very first step! My second step will be to create my logo. I want to use the logo as a profile picture/avatar in as many places as I visit online so that when I finally do open my business, my little logo will already be out there :)

I hope that, in the end, my dream will be successful and maybe I can help some others out there that have the same dream!