While I love cooking savory food, my passion really is baking. Through the years, without even striving for it, I have become the “baker” of the family. Do we need a birthday cake? Call Monica. Is a fancy dessert needed? Call Monica.
Yes, sweet nothings are my thing. (Psst.. check the blog tittle)
But, even though I felt comfortable baking, I knew I was not a GREAT baker. There were many things out there in the baking world that were so unknown to me—pies, anything with yeast, techniques, certain flavor combinations—I was never gutsy enough to try them. I had gotten comfortable with my regular dessert repertoire.
Until I started this blog and saw what was out there—the possibilities. And the baking guru inside of me woke up, tapped me on the shoulder, and told me, “Dude, you need to feed me more baking challenges”
So, I joined a baking club – Heavenly Cake Baker. A group of bakers that came together to bake all of the recipes in Rose Levy Beranbaum’s book, Rose’s Heavenly Cakes.
And I baked and baked for almost a year—50 cakes later and a lot of learning landed me in the “better baker” category—one that does not freak out when the buttercream is separating during mixing or using the (still dreaded) piping bag actually to decorate something and make it “pretty.”
With my new baking skills and experiences, I also gained tons of baking buddies. Sunday and Monday became my favorite days—I would sit and read how everyone fared with the designated cake of the week and soak up the tips and tricks, the personal stories, and the wonderful creativity that this group was willing to dish out.
When the last cake was baked, I think everyone went into a bit of mourning—what were we to do? Some of us started other baking clubs but were never quite the same. I believe that the level of complexity in Rose’s cake is what gave the bakers a challenge, and thus our recaps are always interesting because of the difficulty factor in the cake making and the successes and major failures that each of us experience.
So, when Raymond, a past HCB and a present Gutsy Cook Club member, and I were reminiscing about this, the talk turned to cookbooks, and we were very surprised at how similar our tastes in baking authors were. I happened to mention that I had gotten a new book from Karen Krasne – “Extraordinary Cakes,” and that I was dying to dive into this world of more than three steps-needed-to-create-this cake recipe.
Raymond mentioned that Karen Krasne was a local chef, that he knew her, and that he also tasted some of these creations in her bakery. He was more than willing to join me if I wanted. It took us two more emails before we had a list of cakes and a baking date for the first one.
Our first endeavor?
Continued on next page (page 2)
ADVERTISEMENT
