I can remember when I was young how I used to try to make cake. The first time I tried, I made it out of a box and it turned out great, no surprise there. I just added eggs and oil to prepackaged powder and that was my first perception of how a cake should taste and how easy it was supposed to be to made. As I got a little older, I became more curious and decided to make one from scratch. I worked hard to make sure all the ingredients were there but my impatience got the better of me and I was disappointed in the outcome. All my attempts from there on became more disappointments and I didn't understand why it was so hard to make something.
I am sure that anyone that has ever attempted to bake has had failures, and yes, it is FRUSTRATING. Baking is a science and it is an exacting process which takes time to perfect. I've come to learn that the older and more mature that I've grown, the better my food has become. With maturity comes patience, which is a key ingredient in baking. When I was young, I was too impatient to wait for the butter to come to room temperature, too impatient for the cake to cool down, too impatient to premeasure all the ingredients, too impatient to think about what I was supposed to do. I was in such a hurry to see the end result that I would unconsciously skip steps. I would lunge toward the oven the moment the timer set off it's alarm and I would dig right into cake, only to find myself disappointed all over again.
Shuna Fish Lydon of eggbeater writes:
Learning about food and cooking is a continuous process. It's about developing, arguing about, stealing, rethinking and having opinions. Straight up, with no god damned ice opinions. It's reading, eating out, experimenting, taking notes, asking questions, using the same foods season after season, struggling, spending hours in the cookbook section of various bookstores, traveling, and inspiring others. Being a chef is a verb, As is love.
Now, we may not be as serious as she is about food and we are certainly not chefs, but I agree with her arguement when she says that learning about food and cooking is a continuous process that need's developing. If you are frustrated about baking, be patient and let you're trials be learning steps to help you develop into a better baker.
This is one of my secrets to good baking:
*mise en place-preparation done before starting the actual cooking (measuring, washing, and chopping ahead of time).
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Frustrated? Me too.
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2 comments:
I remember the first time I tried to bake a cake from scratch.....what a disaster. I was so disorganized and cluttered that I had pots and pans and ingredients all over the place. And the worst part was the frosting. I couldn't decide on how or what to do for frosting. So in my stupidity i attempted to make a cooked frosting. After Three attempts and 2 pots of "glass" (aka harden crystalline sugar), I went with my grandmothers advice and made a butter cream frosting, whipped up the powdered sugar and everything else in a jiffy and it was great.
If only I had been more organized, prepared things ahead of time and carefully followed directions as well as took the easier route for the frosting, things would have been a lot more controlled and fun. I think it was good to learn from the experience as from then on I have always laid out ingredients and pre-planned staging and other issues for cakes.
I know exactly how those pre-packaged cakes are... and I've learned to stick with them. I used to always try to bake my own cakes, cookies, brownies, and other desserts, but they never turned out how they were supposed to. After a while, I just kind of gave up. I know that's bad, but after screwing up a million desserts, I might as well take the easy way out so that people can actually enjoy it even though it's not from scratch. Besides, I'm in college now.. I have no time to bake!
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