Here I am, a couple of weeks after my birthday. I decided to put all my love for baking into a blogpost.
I bake a lot. It all started in 2013 when my mother got home a microwave oven. Until that point, she would bake cakes and biscuits in a cooker. I recall the number of experimental desserts and baked goods we attempted. Every weekend, My mum and I would scoop through her older recipe journal and begin working in collaboration. Some days were good, some were feisty, there were days when we had arguments over tweaking the recipes for lack of ingredients. The coolest part was however when the kitchen would be filled with the baking aroma. It made all that bickering worth it. Immediately both of us would be discussing the brown crust and texture, the color, and the aroma. Mum would scarcely need to time the baking. I am not so fortunate. I go by the book, the measuring spoons, and cups, the fancy mixing apparatus, and utter concentration. In the earlier phase of my baking, I would be stressed about the outcome, never really enjoying the process. That definitely was a big turn off when I would excessively compete with myself over the finished product. Now it is a different case. I enjoy my baking adventures. It brings out a rhythm in me with the colors and concoctions, the creamy whipped potions, and the essence of the batter in the tin. I remember as a kid, I absolutely loved gorging on my mum's cookbooks and her recipe journals. The drool-worthy food photographs enchanted me and I longed for all the presentation and flowers on the pages.
On my birthday this year, a dear friend was telling me about cakes from childhood and how he dislikes the creamy layers on the crust. We went into nostalgia mode with our memories of the cake batter and mum's hour-long cooker cakes. Back then, cakes were such a novelty that we only baked them on birthdays. It was the major attraction of that day. Mum would whip out a new recipe every year. Once it was cinnamon, another year was a cherry, then a banana cake, later a pineapple upside-down cake, she also did the black forest cake one year. It's a wonder how much mum slogged that day to make our birthdays special and without any help from us. My mum still bakes and each time it's a new flavor, a new ingredient.
This year I had multiple conversations with friends; one of them on Instagram. I went on and on about baking a cake for myself and my friend shared a rather lovely and insightful thought about baking. He said it's quite a meditative and therapeutic exercise. Like creating an art piece while concentrating on the process pouring our passion and emotion and then patiently waiting for the things to fall into place. I am so taken with this emotion that goes into baking. It's not about sugar or the flour, the fluffiness, or the deliciousness; it's more about putting our love into the batter. This is a recurring feeling when I undertake baking.
One night in October, my three-year-old neighbor was upset and in a bid to make her laugh, I said, let's bake a cake in a mug. She's a sharp three-year-old and helped me in mixing the ingredients, selecting mugs, and then pouring the batter in them. I held her in my arms for her to see the mugs spinning in the oven. She was utterly delighted at that quick baking venture. Needless to say, she's my favorite baking companion when it comes to making mug cakes.
Growing up, we had a shop called 'Make Bake Cake' and I remembered always being enamored with the title. Never really tasted any cake from there. They used to be expensive and the entire idea of splurging on a cake was a bit repulsive to me, even as a child. When they shut shop, I was very sorry to see that board go down. So many memories that revolve around mum baking cakes for cousins and traveling to their cities to hand-deliver them. Her cakes are a big hit among our extended family as well. As I look back at the times we bonded over baking in the kitchen, it does give me a great sense of being my mother's daughter. Here's to my mum's beautiful heart and her delicious cakes!
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