Almost 4 years ago, my casino work colleague was about to retire and his close friends wanted to throw him a surprise party. His friends contacted me to make the cake for the party. His nickname is Bjon and the tarpaulin prepared for the party quoted “BJON VOYAGE.” It’s because after his retirement, Bjon had plans of living abroad.
At that time, I trained my assistant bakers to just make cakes but I took care of frosting and decorating. I value our best-selling cake recipes so I didn’t reveal to them all of the ingredients needed for each recipe. I prepare a pre-mix of some of the dry ingredients and just gave them a copy of the rest of the ingredients they needed to add.
For this particular order, I told them to make 1.5 recipes of our moist chocolate cake in a 9”x13” pan. To easily multiply or divide a recipe to a particular yield we needed, I made all our recipes in grams and not in cups. I made the pre-mix, they baked the cake and made the frosting in the afternoon. When I was about to frost the cake at dawn the following day, suddenly I got nervous. I realized the cake was not the same consistency our moist chocolate cake should be. And then I realized I made a mistake in preparing the pre-mix the day before: I only made pre-mix for 1 recipe and not 1.5! I panicked but there was no time to make another cake so as they say, “the show must go on”. I still finished frosting and decorating the cake but I told the one who ordered it that if it does not taste good, they do not need to pay for it.
Moment of Truth: BVoyage Cake is born!
The moment of truth came: around 10:00 am (during our 6 am – 2 pm duty shift), the party began. We alternately ate when it was our turn to take a break. Nobody complained about the cake and when I tasted it myself, lo and behold, it was the yummiest moist chocolate cake I have ever made! It was 30% less sugar, flour, and cocoa powder than the original recipe. But in my opinion, it turned out to be better because I’m more fond of desserts that aren’t that sweet.
Everybody was also delighted about the cake, so I decided to make it part of our menu and named it after Bjon! I wanted to name it Bjon Voyage but Bjon jokingly said he will have to charge me a huge amount if I use his complete nickname. So, we decided to just name it BVoyage Cake!
Since then, our BVoyage Cake in Can has been a hit to chocolate cake lovers! You can also learn how to make this yourself. I have created a BVoyage Cake in Can Course that teaches you how to make BVoyage cake on your own!
I praise God’s guiding hands in all that we do. Sometimes we make mistakes. But there are times when mistakes will lead us to great discoveries! Let’s just always pray and trust the process.
“Mistakes are doorways to discovery.”
Sam Horn