Recently I've been dabbling a bit more in baking.
The results?
Pure deliciousness!
(And a slight weight gain of a kilo during that week. Must be from all that sugar and batter I ate whilst baking.)
My cousin has been coming over to bake ever since my party, and I've learnt quite a bit from her thus far and it's fueling my dreams of working as a pastry chef/opening my own bakery in future.
So I've tried baking a chocolate cake, topped with a thin layer of Nutella, homemade whipped cream and macerated strawberries – this was done on my own.
Nutella makes everything taste so good.
When I looked up the recipe through my Yummly app, my eyes glossed over the measurements and I muttered out an oh no. This is because in all the times I've baked, I would generally fail when I followed recipes that used the American measurements.
For some reason, baking in "cups" and the likes never works out for me.
When I watched as my cake baked in the oven, it didn't come as a surprise to me when I noticed that something was wrong – my cake wasn't rising as much as I thought it should.
(Well it maaaay be because I beat my cake mixture with a whisk. I'm pretty strong, and I seem to have this tendency to over beat things rather quickly.)
It was a simple one-layer cake, and I received pretty good reviews on it even though it didn't rise properly. Then again, the recipe (got it off thepioneerwoman here) was for a 2-layered cake, and from the pictures I've seen on her blog, her cake didn't seem to rise too much as well.
So.. who knows?
My cousin, Nadya, works as a pastry chef and as I mentioned earlier, she's been coming down to bake pretty often with me.
With her, we tried baking 2 cakes:
Carrot cake with cream cheese and lemon zest frosting
This cake turned out to be a success, and it had my whole kitchen smelling like it.
Fluffy, moist.. and eating it with the cream cheese is just.. heaven on Earth.
The downside to this cake was that the recipe required large amounts of egg and sugar, and it was, however, too oily as we also added large amounts of extra virgin olive oil. Mom and I intend to bake this together again, but we'll tweak the recipe to make it slightly healthier and lighter :)
Lemon pound cake with orange zest & juice frosting
This cake was amazing.
I didn't help for this one at all (except to make the frosting).
A pound cake – as it's name suggests – is a rather heavy cake, both literally and figuratively.
When we cut a slice of it to try, we found that we got full and were at the "I think I've had enough" stage pretty quick. It was soooo dense! The frosting was just delicious though, and I'm not saying that just because I was the one who made it.
The boyfriend seemed to disagree when I let him try a bit of it. "What is this???? Ugh it tastes.. weird."
I'm guessing he doesn't like oranges very much..
Oh well.
I can't believe I baked so many cakes in just a week.
The problem with baking a lot in a short span of time when you have a small family? Trying to finish all the cakes! My mom swore she gained a bit of weight and was bloated over the next few days. My brother, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy that we had more desserts lying around in the fridge.
He especially enjoyed my chocolate cake and ate almost a quarter of it the first time round! It warmed my heart and really made me happy (okay I'll admit that one reason is because he's gaining the weight from the cake – not me!) because I love it when people enjoy the things I bake.
I always make sure that I'm in a good mood when baking as I believe that when people eat your baked/cooked goods, they'll be able to "feel" the mood that you stepped into the kitchen with, and it affects the taste of your baked/cooked goods.
It's a silly thought, but that's what keeps me in a good mood while baking in the kitchen. :)