My stint with baking!

I never thought I would start baking this early in life, I associate baking with "mother hood" so it was odd for me to experience a surge for baking last week. Don’t get me wrong, I love baking, I must have watched all Nigella’s baking recipes at least fifty times, but never felt confident to try any of the dishes myself. Also all the good baking recipes have eggs in them, and of course that wouldn’t work for me. So last weekend right before mother’s day, something came over me. After a long gruelling work week, my friend and I went for some drinks after work on Friday. Drinks & girlfriend is the best combination everJ. I felt calm and excited for the weekend ahead. After we said our good byes and hugs and kisses, I started walking home. The grocery store is on my way home and somehow I felt myself being drawn to the store. So I went in and started filling up my shopping cart with baking goods, cream cheese, butter, chocolate, whipping cream, milk, sour cream, vanilla, biscuits, food colouring…oh yeah I was on a mission to get all possible ingredients I could think of that might help me bake that perfect cake. I had no idea what I was going to bake, so I quickly sent a text to my friend and told her I was going to bake something over the weekend, just so there is someone who knows about....lol. 
So anyways, still feeling good I went to the checkout counter feeling proud of my shopping (did not want to look at the bill though) and walked home with my groceries in one hand and creative ideas flying inside my head…should I do a simple chocolate cake, or a layered chocolate fudge cake, how about cupcakes or may be a lemon cake…hmm…red velvet cakes are nice too…well can you tell I was having a sugar overdose in my head…lol…one thing I knew for sure was that I wanted to decorate the cake so there has to be icing or frosting. I mean isn’t that the whole point of making a cake, to decorate it in the end.
Back home I put all the groceries away and started with my research. Reading cookery books, googling stuff and scribbling away in my note book…till it was time for dinner. Friday ended and I felt good about the oncoming Saturday, I had my larder full of baking goods, my recipe was almost ready so there was nothing that could stop me from baking that yet undecided cake for mother’s day.Saturday morning was spent lazing around, doing some chores, eating, talking to family and friends overseas and jut relaxing. But I was being haunted by the cake so I went back to my note book and did some permutations and combinations and realised that the basics of baking are simple you need a binding ingredient, something that will help the cake to rise and something sour to make the cake fluffy. So by Saturday evening I was fully confident of my recipe and instead of baking the cake on Saturday I procrastinated all evening and decided to work on the cake on Sunday. Since the temperature is low, I removed all the ingredients from the fridge so they can be at room temperature, ready for me to start baking first thing in the morning.
Now the recipe I decided was simple, 2 layers of cake with chocolate and strawberry filling. Since this was a cake for my Mum, I had to cut down on the chocolate as she is not a big fan of it (although she isn't here to taste it, I wanted to make something she would like). So I added an extra layer of strawberry filling.Sunday morning was beautiful, lovely weather, I was feeling excited about my baking experiment, so with a nice cup of chai I started pottering around the kitchen. I finished baking late in the evening and believe me it wasn’t the easiest thing to do, but with proper planning and a glass of wine J  I managed to bake the cakes, get the chocolate fudge and strawberry cream filling ready and was able to layer the cakes and decorate them with some beautiful flowers. Now I know why the bakers in those old movies were always drunk and why is baking an art and not just science.
I think for a first timer my cakes were beautifully baked and I will continue with this new found surge for baking. They say Bakers are born and not Created well if that is true then I can say, the baker in me is born and will continue to grow happily ever after. J   

The recipe is posted in the next post. Hope you try it! 

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