My first baking attempt.

I have been cooking for more than 15 years. Only now then I started trying to bake, I guess there are many reasons to it. Firstly, we simply do not have the equipment, no oven, microwave oven, mixing bowl, hand mixer etc... Secondly, cakes, desserts and cookies are so easily available in the market now. Thirdly, my mum is never a baker, she only makes Chinese desserts such as kuey. So what’s the change? I guess Covid 19 plays a big part. With the circuit breaker, it is much harder to get to eat cakes and desserts. Also, we have recently bought our first air fryer. Actually since the circuit breaker started, we had bought quite a few cooking tools and equipment, electric hand-mixer, spatula, digital weighing machine, aluminum foil, kitchen paper towel; to name a few. Prior to this Covid 19, I don’t even have kitchen paper towel or Milo powder.

Dalgona Coffee

My first try of the dessert was the Dalgona coffee. 1:1:1, sounds super easy right? No, the difficult part is the whipping as we did not have the electric hand-mixer then. We used a lot of hand and arm power, mind you, we had to whip for more than 20 minutes. The end product? It looks much better than its taste. The taste was slightly above average I would say, but not so for the amount of effort put in. We tried the Dalgona coffee again when we had the electric hand mixer, but failed terribly. It was so hard to ‘beat’ the mixture. My DH kept nagging that I used too little amount of the coffee, and I had the wrong equipment. In the end I had to ditch the electric hand mixer, and switched to manual mode, using my hand to whip the mixture to the correct consistency. Would I try again? I don’t think so.

Milo cake

Second attempt at the dessert was the milo cake, which looked so easy on the Internet recipe, with only 3 ingredients. This time it not only looked ugly but also tasted so-so. What went wrong? I did not have the right equipment to measure the ingredients. All the measurements are based on estimation, also I had stinged on the milo powder. So what had we learnt from the 2 attempts of the dessert? Hmm.. One must really use the proper equipment and exact measurement given. Solution: we bought more baking equipment and ingredients.

Air fryer chocolate chip cookie

When the air fryer came, I was elated, and wanted to try my hand on cookies. I already gotten all sort of flour and butter whenever possible, as there tends to be a shortage in the market now. The chocolate chip recipe looked simple enough too. The final product turned out to be too sweet, as I had used the normal milk chocolate and coarse sugar instead of dark or unsweetened chocolate or fine sugar. I guess I have more things to buy then.

No bake chocolate cake

Next, I tried the no-bake cake. The obvious choice was the chocolate cake, as I had all the ingredients. It was not easy getting the whipping cream, I had gone to at least 4-5 supermarkets to get hold of it. Again, it was a simple recipe, the process looked easy too. I had all the equipment now, the failure rate should be low right? Wrong again. Many things went wrong. Starting from the cake base, the butter used was not enough to hold the biscuit crumps, hence the base was not set properly. I should have used my intuition to add more, but I didn’t. This was mistake number 1.

Mistake 2

Mistake number 2. I have zero experience with agar agar strips. I simply did not know how much to use or how to adapt it into the recipe given. The recipe for the cake called for the use of agar agar powder which is out of stock everywhere in the market. Outcome: the chocolate cake did not turn out to be smooth, there were small lumps of agar agar strips in the cake. Lesson learnt, I should have melted the strips in the mixture gradually instead of boiling them separately.

Mistake 3

I’ve cut the amount of chocolate because of the previous experience with the cookies. Outcome: the chocolate cake was not sweet and the colour was too light.

I was quite disappointed with my chocolate cake, as it should have been my first home-make cake for my DH, as his birthday was around the corner. My DH was very encouraging though, he was quick to assure me that it was my first attempt, and it tasted quite alright.

Finale Mango ice cream

My proudest dessert I had made so far was the mango ice-cream. It was Devi-licious. I managed to dig out the glassware for the ice-cream, which was sleeping in one of my cupboard for more than a decade. I had all the ingredients: mango, whipping cream, condensed milk. I even had the digital weighing scale to weigh all the ingredients. This time, I tried to follow the recipe as closely as possible. The whole process of the ice-cream took longer than I’d estimated. Most of the time was spend preparing the mango puree: cutting the mango, meshing it, reducing it by cooking it. The most difficult process of the ice-cream making session was whipping the whipping cream. I can’t seem to whip it to the right consistency: firm. The mixture flew everywhere. I really had a bad experience using the electric hand mixer. That was my second time using it, the first time was the Dalgona coffee. I really don’t know what the issue was. Was it the hand mixer itself, or I simply do not know how to use the electric hand mixer? I did not have a mixing bowl, so I’d used a pot, which seemed deep enough. My shopping list for baking grew longer again. Anyways, both DH and I loved the ice-cream.

Baking or making dessert is quite a fun but stressful experience for me, it really requires some experience and exact measurement. I would prefer to do normal Chinese cooking anytime. Chinese cooking seems much simpler and the taste can be adjusted during the cooking process; unlike baking, which you can’t really taste it until the final product.

Reflections

Will I make dessert again? Yes, but not so soon. We simply can’t eat too much of this sweet stuff, they are still sitting in the fridge.