Spring Breeze Twenty Years

Chapter 300 Packaging is Important

This job wasn't difficult for Xiaowei. He just needed to coordinate his two hands and keep the scraper level. With his skill as a master tiler, he could smooth it out directly. The difficult part was designing and making the patterns after the surface was finished.

After spreading the cream, Xiaowei thought for a moment and started making flowers. He took a piping bag and a piping stick and slowly squeezed out the petals. The flowers on the cream cake were squeezed out petal by petal. The shape of the flowers was all controlled by hand. From the bud to the fully bloomed shape, it was all done in this way.

Li Wenhe gestured and explained, "To get a good flower shape, you need to know what stage of growth the flower is in, how big it should be, and how many petals it should have. Then you need to imagine what the flower will look like at the top of the flower stick. The force should be even, and the speed should be fast. If you're too slow, the flower shape will be very ugly, and the petals will be too thick. When squeezing the flower bud, the upper part of the flower tip should be turned outwards, and when the flower is in full bloom, the flower tip should be turned inwards. The inner petals should be squeezed up and down, and the outer large petals should be pulled open to the left and right. All the petals should have an arc to look beautiful."

Xiao Wei squeezed several times but was not satisfied. He threw the broken petals into the cream bowl. When he finally squeezed out a decent flower, Li Wen pouted and pointed at the cream bowl, saying, "Boss, you put the red one in the white cream bowl."

Xiao Wei looked down and, sure enough, he had accidentally spilled all the pink whipped cream he had piped into the white cream bowl. He blinked and turned to Li Wenhe, asking, "What do we do?"

Li Wenhe smiled and said, "It's alright, keep going, it's already very good, you can do it even better with a little more work."

This is something you get used to. Once you've squeezed the first flower right, there's not much of a problem. Soon, a dozen or so flowers of various sizes were placed on the cake, arranged in a cluster that's wider at the top and narrower at the bottom. Then comes adding the leaves. This is simple; there are special leaf-shaped nozzles, so you just need to dot them. Li Wenhe said, "When adding leaves, don't pull them straight up. Lift them upwards and stretch them back and forth a few times in the middle. The resulting patterns will look very nice and more realistic." Xiao Wei then put it into practice.

After the leaves were added, Li Wen pointed at the cake and said, "Boss, you didn't add any frills."

When making a birthday cake, it's common practice to add a decorative border around the corners of both the flat and vertical surfaces. This makes the cake appear fuller and more attractive, and also helps to conceal the marks left by the scraper.

Xiao Wei shook his head, looked around on the control panel, and asked Li Wenhe, "What's used to extrude those very fine threads?"

Xiao Wei took the tracing paper and tried several times before finally making a suitable cone-shaped mold. He filled it with green buttercream, wrapped it tightly, and used scissors to make a small hole at the pointed end. He then tested it, and when he squeezed it, a thin green thread shot out. Xiao Wei then added vines and garnishes to the cake using the green thread. Li Wen clapped her hands and exclaimed, "Wow, boss, you're really amazing! It looks beautiful!"

Finally, Xiaowei used a red fruit to write the six characters "Xiao Liwen is a puppy" on the blank space on the cake. Li Wenhe laughed and said, "You write beautifully, better than mine. Boss, you are very suitable for this job. Your hands are very steady."

Li Wen pouted and said, "The boss is a big bad guy, and Master Li is a big bad guy too."

Xiao Wei and Li Wenhe laughed together. Xiao Wei put down his tools, wiped his hands, and said, "Alright, here you go eat."

Li Wen cheered and carefully picked up the cake, then ran to the other side of the restaurant. Even though she works here now, she still goes to the restaurant whenever she has free time; she's such a little ray of sunshine.

Li Wenhe helped Xiaowei pack up the tools and said, "Boss, you can run the shop by yourself now. You're really amazing. You learn quickly and are steady. You're very suitable for this job."

Xiao Wei smiled and asked, "Is there anything else we need to do at the shop?"

Li Wenhe pointed to the packaging box and said, "This generic packaging made in Jiangsu and Zhejiang is really ugly, and it's made of black cardboard, which looks dirty. It's best to change it and make your own custom packaging. It'll look terrible if you take it out. Use white cardboard; it looks more hygienic." He picked up the bottom and lid of the packaging and said, "Look, the plastic used for the bottom and lid is also bad. The bottom is very soft and dark, and the lid is not transparent and has a lot of bumps. It makes something that is clearly high-end look much lower-end after being packaged."

Xiao Wei nodded. It did look bad, but there was nothing he could do; all the generic packaging available on the market for now looked like this. He said, "I'll go back to Fengtian in a few days and see if there's anywhere that can make them. We can order a batch ourselves."

Li Wenhe said, "Yes, any packaging factory with printing and blister packaging machines can process it. Just design the pattern."

Xiao Wei said, "Okay, I'll look for it. If it's suitable, we'll make our own packaging boxes as you said." As he spoke, he casually glanced outside, frowned, and quickly walked to the door. Looking out through the glass in the door, he saw the young man from Jiangsu and Zhejiang who made cakes in the Nanhu Market walking over with three men, talking and pointing at the cake shop.

Li Wenhe walked over, looked outside, and asked, "What do you see?"

Xiao Wei watched the Zhejiang lad and his group walk away and said, "It's nothing, I just saw someone I know, maybe I mistook them for someone else." He shook his head and walked back into the shop, but a little worried. When he got to the counter, he saw the pink cream he had thrown into the white cream. He shook his head, picked up a spoon, and prepared to scoop the pink cream out and put it into the pink cream bowl.

Li Wenhe came over and said, "Come, I'll teach you how to grow multicolored flowers; they're very beautiful."

He made a large cone out of a larger triangular piece of parchment paper, cut an opening at the tip with scissors, picked out a piping tip, and put it inside, saying, "Look at the piping tip side, put white on the wider side at the bottom." He held the cone-shaped paper tube sideways with a spoon, filled it halfway with white cream, and said, "This is the base of the petals, and then on this side, the narrower side, put red, or blue or purple, this is the edge of the petals." He used the spoon to add the pink cream that Xiaowei had put in the wrong bowl, and shook it down firmly.

"It doesn't need to be perfectly even, just fill it like this. Adjust the direction of the piping tip, and then squeeze some out like this." He wrapped the cone-shaped paper tube filled with cream and squeezed it into the pink cream bowl. At first, it was pure white, and then pink gradually appeared on the narrower edge. When the white and pink were about the same width, he stopped and said, "Okay, now it's about the right width, you can make flowers."

She picked up a flower stick and squeezed out a flower to show Xiaowei: "Look, the edges of the petals are pink, fading to a lighter shade towards the bottom, with the lower half being white. Doesn't it make the flower look fresher? Pretty, right?"

Li Wenhe placed the flower on the turntable, then took some transparent stencil and dabbed it on the petals a few times. He added leaves underneath, then dabbed them on the leaves with the stencil again, saying, "Look, isn't it beautiful? Doesn't it look like a flower that just bloomed in the morning?"

Xiao Wei looked down and examined it carefully. Indeed, the flowers made this way looked fresh and tender.

(End of this chapter)