|
|
|
read between the lines
first time baking with the instruction of my aunt, i tried my hand at baking a simple butter cake on monday, for the first time. my aunt being a serial cake baker, had finally taken up my suggestion to invite me the next time she was baking, so i could learn. and i must say, based on family comments (and my own taste buds), i did a fairly good job. if my mom, ever a critic by nature, said "not bad for a first try", then it must've been good. haha.ingredients were fairly simple: -butter (250 gms) -sugar (250 gms) -flour (250 gms) -eggs (4 or 5) what was not simple, however, was the creaming, more commonly known as 'beating'. i had no idea beating involved stirring the ingredients together (mixed one at a time) in one circular direction with a heavy wooden spoon at a fast pace. apparently the air needed for the cake to rise (in the oven later) will dissipate, or the ingredients being mixed will not emulsify if one stirred slowly or in interchanging directions. so it was definitely hard arm work...which leaves me to guess that frequent cake bakers probably have lots of strength and stamina in that area! i worked up a sweat in no time. but it still didn't put me off baking, especially when i viewed the wonderful end result, haha. so after everything was mixed as best as we could (my aunt helped, especially when it looked like the ingredients being blended at the time started lumping up and having trouble dissolving), we poured everything into this giant container that looked like a pot, that had previously been greased with butter and lined with tracing paper at the bottom (to prevent the cake from sticking as it hardened) and popped it into the oven. oven temperature was supposed to be around 350 to 400 degrees farenheit, which is i-don't-know-how-much degrees celsius (this is why i will never be a science student), so we had to frequently keep it at the heat indicated by knob no. 4 or 5 for around an hour. my aunt did this part for me. around the 40th minute, we did the poke-the-cake's-centre-with-a-skewer test to see if the centre had been baked, which it very nearly was. (if anything stuck to the skewer, it meant the cake had not yet hardened -- common sense.) my aunt took it out around the 45th minute and kept repeating apologetically that the top got a bit burnt because the knob didn't click the last time she turned it from 5 to 4 (meaning it was still at no. 5's heat), but in my opinion it didn't look that burnt.  we had to let the cake cool off before keeping it, or else it would get moldy due to the heat's moisture getting trapped in whatever container it was kept in (in my case, it was an old cake tin). but while waiting for it to cool off, we cut off a slice to try it. and it tasted fan-tas-tic, at least to me, haha. it tasted like a butter cake should taste like, and the crust didn't taste burnt or anything.all in all, it was a good experience which i wouldn't mind repeating. besides finally getting to know how to bake a cake, i knew it would be a good excuse for bonding, which it was, and it was also a good preoccupation for the night. |
|
|
.jpg){kind=link}