May 14, 2013

 I arrived at La Duni baking studio in uptown a little before nine o'clock. After a while of sitting outside, I was let in and introduced to Dunia Borga's assistant, Carolina. She gave me a brief tour of the small kitchen, then put me immediately to work. First, I packaged an assortment of Artisan Butter cookies, which smelled delicious. Then I packaged Mexican Wedding Cookies and Pistachio Cookies. The system was very precise and each type of cookie had a different ribbon color and package. After packaging over a hundred different cookies, I sorted them into the boxes that would deliver them to the restaurants around Dallas. La Duni has four restaurants, one in Fairview, one in McKinney, and two in Uptown. At the La Duni studio they had the packaging down to a science. I was careful to count correctly in order to get the correct amount of bags, stickers, and ribbons.

After about two hours of packaging, I was introduced to Angie. Angie is in charge of decorating special event cookies. I watched and learned as she beautifully crafted cookies and baked them to perfection. Then, after letting them cool in the cooling racks, she proceeded to decorate them with fondant and icing.  Angie rolled out the colorful fondant and shaped them into different shapes, patterns and sizes. She let me help make stems and little green leaves to decorate the apple shaped cookies. She decorated the cookies with white icing that spelled out "Thank You!" After that, I helped clean out the icing bags. We preceded to make Lion, Panda, and Frog cookies, each with a certain system to guarantee perfection. I learned how to use the machine that seals the packaging.

The Motto of La Duni is "Taste Love," and today I got to see the in and outs of how this wonderful company makes that possible.