Saturday, September 12, 2009

A few Butter Cakes

We have quite a few butter cakes at home now, even after eating quite a number already.


A few butter cakes...

This is because today, we had our first lesson of the Foundation Cake Making Course at Creative Culinaire.

(We as in The Husband and I. We are attending this course together. By the way, I thought it was so sweet of The Husband to agree to go for this class with me actually. It's really nice to learn something together as a couple.)

Actually, I wasn't so keen on this first lesson initially. This is because the first lesson is called "The Art of Butter Cakes". And actually, the only cakes I can bake are butter cakes. So, I thought this class might be just teaching me things I already know.

But as I attended the class, I'm reminded about why I like the classes at Creative Culinaire again.

The instructor, Judy Koh, teaches a lot on the science behind baking. Like the function that each ingredient plays in the cake, the differences between different types of flours, he chemicals in your baking powder and baking soda, etc. I thought it is good to know these things to understand what is happening in that oven as I bake.

And she shares quite a bit of practical tips too. From how to minimise washing by planning the way you use your equipments and bowls, to alternating between adding flour and liquid to the butter mixture to minimise gluten development, to understanding errors made in baking.. I thought I learnt quite a bit that I didn't know previously.

Anyway, we made 3 cakes on our own today, including

The Walnut Cake - Only ours didn't have any walnuts in them. We forgot! It was so funny


The walnut-less Walnut Cake.
Looks a bit ugly after it cooled down. But it's quite moist and light.
I thought this was the most troublesome cake of the 3 we made today.

The Chocolate Cupcake - Which is actually called the Sunflower Cupcake if you decorate it. We didn't want cream on ours so we only decorated two.


I liked how these turned out. And they were quite yummy too.
Just a tad too sweet for my taste.

The first 2 cakes I have EVER decorated. Yikes!!

The Marbled Butter Cake - We baked this in one of those flexible cake moulds, so they had a funny shape.


The Before..

And The After..

5 comments:

Ah Ngao said...

hi there,i stumbled acrosse your blog and i think its a nice blog.my wife said you can bake - according to the photos shown.she like to give it a try..

Open Kitchen Concept said...

Hi Ah Ngao, so nice of you.. and your wife! I like the your dragonfruit tree.. and gemstones! :)

KT said...

Hi hi, I used silicone cake moulds before but the cake didn't brown very well. Do you know if they are supposed to be like that? Thanks! Love your blog! Cheers!

Open Kitchen Concept said...

Hi KT, so nice of you! I like your blog too.. and all the food you share on GCS. Hm.. well, it was my first time using it and I see no difference in the results from baking in a pan actually. The instructor says she uses silcon trays when she travels (cos easier to carry) for work so I suppose they are not different from normal cake trays? Not that sure, actually.. :)

Rummi, the gardener. said...

Hi KT, I use 90% silicon baking moulds. Find that stuffs bake evenly on the sides. So not possible to get a cake crust (or charred sides) with them.