The Art of Mixing and Folding

Inspired by the delicious banana cake baked by a friend, we asked for the recipe and tried our hands at baking it too. Our first attempt was acceptable – the cake tastes good though it has a burnt bottom and sank slightly in the middle. Our second attempt a week later fared better – the cake was more delicious (we used riper bananas this time), no burnt bottom nor sagging middle but it was a little dense at the bottom.We thought some professional advice would be timely, so we signed up for the Cake Baking Foundation Course at Creative Culinaire. The first class was on baking butter cakes. Judy Koh, chef cum teacher, taught the class different creaming methods and showed the right way of mixing and folding ingredients.

We couldn’t wait to start baking our first cake – a Walnut Butter Cake. The creaming went well, but our egg white just wouldn’t stiffen no matter how long we whisk it. As a result, our walnut cake did not rise much. Well, it did become a star though — it was used in the post-mortem to show the rest of the students what watery egg whites do to cakes.

We are quite proud of our second cake – a Marble Butter Cake. It was moist and delicious — attested by friends whom we shared the cake with. Our partners (4 of us shared a working table) baked the Sunflower Cupcakes while we were still labouring over our walnut cake. When the cupcakes have cooled, we have fun dipping them in molten chocolate and dressing them up as beautiful sunflowers.

While we were busy baking, Judy cut her walnut cake into pieces for us to try. It was the lightest and fluffiest walnut cake that we have ever tasted. We are now more inspired than ever to perfect the art of mixing, whisking and folding. While we are still some light years away from that, we are keeping our fingers crossed that our cake will not again be the “star” in the next class.




- M <
-