My Baking Story!

Baking is my passion...and that too, mostly cakes and cookies...

Today, in my first blog, I am going to share few of my baking anecdotes with you all, before I go into recipes and ideas of baking and decorating a cake...

No, I didn't learn baking from my Mom or Grandmom. In a Bengali family, like ours, the word "baking" was not in the culinary dictionary and the word "cake" was available only during the month of Christmas. My Christian neighborhood, used to send us various special homemade goodies for their festival days, but the cake-part was not homemade at all! And that time, I used to hate that taste of too-sweet, too-gooey and too-fruity Christmas cake, which were mostly available in every local grocery store in our neighborhood... and so I hated the word "cake"...

But at the back of my mind, I was extremely curious to know about the process of making a cake. We didn't have any recipe book at home, the newspaper those days - didn't have any recipe-sharing page, also none of my friends had any information about this (neither I asked them...!) So, I was at dark for quite some time... with only this much idea, that cake is prepared by baking in oven.

The opportunity came quite surprisingly, when I visited my aunt's place for a short vacation and my cousin (aunt's daughter) told me that they've got this new cake baking oven - the basic, electric-run, round-shaped cake oven, which was used only for baking bundt cakes. So we started our experiment with the cake-oven, with a religious intention of baking a cake. The eggs were broken, the flour was measured and then there was the most difficult task of mixing sugar into the eggs. It was granular sugar and there was no mixer-grinder, so the only way left was to blend it using a spoon. I remember, we'd spent almost couple of hours just to prepare the batter, before the oven was put into action. Finally the cake was ready... but I don't remember the taste... this much I can tell you, that it was no better than the taste of cake, I was used to...!!!

My next baking experience, was in USA. The apartment, I used to live, had a beautiful cooking range with a big, working oven. I've used that oven for several of my baking projects, including cakes. But, I was not satisfied with any of the outcome, particularly for the cakes. Those days I used to subscribe recipe cards, and I tried few of those cake-baking recipes, but they were not to presentable to my guests. Either the cake got hard like brick or not well baked. So the learning process continued...

I came back to my city and those days, one famous brand started to promote their pressure-cooked ready-made cake mix product. I tried few of them and actually, the first birthday cake for my younger daughter, was actually made that way. I decorated that cake with gems and people really appreciated the initiative. But again, those were not "baked", rather "steamed"... :(

The dream of "baking a cake" came true, when I relocated to my current city and bought a convection micro-wave. The first few trials were not good, but gradually I learnt the tricks from various sources and collected few fool-proof recipes of basic cakes... Now I can bake perfect cakes, but the learning process is still on, as now I have to practice the skill of decorating the cakes - icing, frosting, fondant, drawing on cake.... there is no-end to learning!

No journey is possible without the helping hands from your fellows... My regular discussion on cooking and sometimes - baking, with my dearest friend is one such helping hand - which I must admit... she is a gem of a person and a brilliant cook, too... My daughters have always been the soul source of inspiration... because every time I baked a cake, they wanted to make it much better than the earlier one. I've learnt more tricks, being with them...

Let me start another journey of blogging with my baking... hope you will be beside me to lend your helping hands, whenever I'm in trouble...! You're always welcome to share your baking tips and experience with me! Happy baking....