Baking & Beyond

Baking is a method of preparing food by heat either you use oven or hot ashes or stones.

It seems so easy to look at when watching someone bake something. But do you know how hard the process of producing baked goods?

High school days was the time I remember learning basic baking procedures in cake making and its main ingredients.

There are a lot of baked goods such as pizza, bread (the most common), cakes and pastries, even pasta and other savory foods and many other types of food.

When I started working I tried going back to my old skills like arts and crafts and baking. A friend encouraged me to bake again for her to earn extra. She would buy my cakes in a low price and she will resell it to her friends. Unexpectedly the cakes was a hit in the town.

Christmas season came and more and more orders are piling up on the queue. I was the only one baking at night and working at day time. That's when I realised baking isn't the easiest way to cook food. 😅

Our Christmas sale was successful and after that I paused for a few months and tried gaining back my energy and strength. Lol!

Then after some years I learned some tricks on decorating and making a more presentable cake which gained me some confidence.

But you know what, baking is never really easy. Especially the decorated ones. You'll need art skills and ideas to make it as presentable to satisfy customers. It needs a lot of effort. One cake consumes a lot of time.

Cakes, bread and cookies are my favorite baked goods so you'll find me busy during weekends on my kitchen doing a lot of baking.

Not only you will need art in baking but also application of science. Ingredients need to be measured to avoid discoloration or distortion of your cakes. Like when you make a Swiss meringue buttercream you'll need enough butter to regain the consistency of your frosting because too little amount will make it drippy and will not work at all.

In making the batter there are different techniques like putting super hot milk or water into a chocolate cake mixture to make a moist finished cake product. Or putting too much baking soda and baking powder will create a dome on top of your cake. It will also affect the taste.

There must also be enough distribution of heat to avoid over cooking or some parts might get undercooked. Overcooked cakes make it dry and creates cracks.

There's a lot of things you have to consider in baking. Baking is beyond the word itself. It needs focus and determination. And ofcourse passion. 😉