Cholena shares her experience about baking homemade cakes. Simple ingredients and a bit of imagination works wonders. She tells us how she innovates and adds almost anything from her kitchen to make yummy cakes. Baking a cake yourself is literally cakewalk, better still, a piece of cake, literally. Here’s a Different Truths exclusive.
Growing up, hearing the word ‘bakery’ was as pleasant as honey from a honeycomb, since it was here that I got to taste all things sweet. Not to mention that these came in all shapes and colours. However, they all tasted about the same to me, and my palate was begging to feast on something more exotic.
My imaginations desperately longed to put my cravings into a form of actual cakes that I desired. I asked my mom, “Is it too difficult to bake?” She said, “No, it’s too easy. All you need is a little bit of flour, sugar, butter and some eggs.” But, there wasn’t a single moment I caught her baking.
Years passed. Whenever the prices of cakes escalated or whenever we were rushing to get that one last minute Christmas cake, my mom would repeat her cake mantra ingredients. “So little things and you can already bake a huge cake,” she would say. “All you need is a little bit of flour, sugar, butter and some eggs.” She would repeat this all over again.
Carrying this with me till I grew up, I thought it was about time that I put on my baker’s cap. Keeping my mom’s mantra in mind, I googled. Turns out her special ingredients when put together has a name – Butter Cake.
Five ingredients were all that was needed. Cake flour, butter, white sugar, eggs and the one thing that she left out was Vanilla essence. And so, I settled on baking a butter cake with buttercream frosting and it turned out to be a success.
In time, I realised that baking any cake is just a piece of cake.
I read somewhere that baking involves chemistry and it demands accuracy and care. But the little devil inside me wanted to push it further.
Left over pavlova, dark chocolate chunks, cinnamon baking chips, wild berries, broken walnuts, dried ginger powder, fruits canned in syrup, grated carrots, almond slivers, cream cheese, chilled buttermilk, fresh homemade raspberry cream, mashed bananas – anything in my fridge or on my dining table went straight into the cake batter . Every bite of those cakes was like a party explosion in my mouth. Others had difficulty believing those cakes actually came out of my kitchen.
Ever since my very first experience with that butter cake, I had moved on to baking brownies, muffins, cupcakes, cookies and even have tried my hands on different frostings like chocolate ganache, sweetened condensed milk with unsweetened cocoa powder or simply melted bitter chocolate. I could easily say that that year turned out to be the most delicious chapter of my entire life.
One lazy weekend morning, I was getting ready to bake some scrumptious French toast and my daughter asked me, “Mom, is it too difficult to bake?” To that, I smiled and replied, “No baby, it’s too easy. All you need is a little bit of…” I paused. Lost in thought, I laughed as my clueless daughter gazed at me, surprised.
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©Cholena Nashan
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