Cake Making Stage 1 Class (Lesson 1)

Last Saturday was the first lesson of Cake Making Stage 1 class at Creative Culinaire. I was looking forward to this class as I registered for it since June. Lesson 1 was not very smooth going for both me and my partner. The lesson started off with about 2hrs of theory by Judy the instructor. After that, it was our turn to make the cakes. The first cake to make was the Walnut Butter cake. My partner and I started creaming the butter but found it very strange that the butter was slightly greyish in colour. Initially we suspected that the mixer was leaking oil into the butter. Judy changed a mixer for us but the same thing happened and we could not figure out was was actually wrong. The third round, Judy suggested we use a smaller mixer and this round, the same thing happened... grey streaks of oil look alike substance in the butter mixture. I finally realised that it could be due to the metal peddle that hit the sides of the metal bowl that created the grey streaks that looked like oil in the butter. In the end, we were advised to use the plastic bowl instead of the metal bowl and things were all right.

The reason why grey streaks appeared in the butter was because I, the smart alec slightly tilted that mixer bowl so that the peddle could beat the butter as the quantity of the butter was slightly too little and this resulted to the peddle constantly hitting the sides of the bowl, creating the grey streaks of oil like substance. For the subsequent cakes, I just carefully lifted the mixer bowl once a while so that the paddle could mix the butter and not constantly hold the bowl.

On top of all the frenzy about the mysterious streaks of oil look alike substances appearing in the butter, my partner drop a glass bowl and broke it. We were lucky we didn't have to pay for the bowl and Judy was so nice to make sure that my partner was all right and not hurt by the broken glass bits.

Despite all the initial 'bad luck', our walnut cake turned out pretty well, lightly fluffed up and soft texture. The taste was good as well.

The second recipe that we had to complete was chocolate cupcakes. This was to be done by a group of 4 people. While we struggled with the walnut cake, our 2 other classmate that shared out table did the chcolate cupcakes. It turned out very soft and definitely better than some of the cupcakes that I tasted outside.

We get to decorate our cupcakes into sunflowers or with chocolate and colourful candies. The sunflower was decorated with yellow coloured buttercream which was not at all tasty and on top of that, fattening. It was on the whole, very pretty. It will be nice to put some chocolate cream inside the cupcakes. Each of us got to decorate 3 cupcakes in total to bring home.

The third recipe that we made was the marble butter cake which uses another technique slightly different from the way the walnut cake was might. The pyamids were made using silicon moulds. The texture of this cake was slightly denser compared to the walnut cake but on the whole soft and moist. Judy made hers into roses which is definitely much nicer compared to pyramids.

Next Saturaday is National Day, so there won't be any class. Looking forward to Lesson 2 where we will be learning Chiffon cakes. Hopefully our luck would be better next lesson.