Learning to Bake

Baking - a lot of people understand what it is, but it is becoming less popular as our lives get increasingly fast-paced and geared towards convenience. Many people simply do not have the time to bake in their own homes anymore. Having said that, if you are looking at rekindling your passion for this lost tradition it is important to realize what baking covers.

At one end of the spectrum, we have bread as our most basic staple, and at the other we have cake as the ultimate celebratory food employed to mark our most important occasions. There can be no questioning that baked foods are important to us and, while baking every day is a lavishness many of us cannot afford time-wise, maybe by baking our own goods every now and again we can better treasure those simple meals and special occasions by adding to them more directly.

You might be stunned to know that these tasty little dishes have been around since the early 1800s and were originally baked in individual clayware cups or ramekin cake pans. Here is a bit of trivia for you: they are called fairy cakes in the UK and Ireland, probably because you can easily imagine one feeding a whole party of thumb-sized sprites. Anyway, cup cakes have a long pedigree, but they have also evolved over the years.

Once you have got your baking bearings, piping bags, syringes, stencils and other such tools and bakeware will really elevate your efforts and will make things look impressive. They give you much more control over things. Putting your loved ones name on cup cakes or the like is certain to pluck the heartstrings, and doing that will require a piping bag. The great thing is that they are inexpensive and using them is fairly intuitive. Also, living in the Information Age has a big benefit here: you can be sure something like YouTube is going to have a few clips on how to properly handle such instruments.

In addition to basic lettering, borders, stars, rosettes and other such effects can be easily achieved with the piping bag (also called a pastry bag). You simply cannot create the appealing uniformity or tidiness of professional baked goods with a knife or spatula. Filling cupcakes or embellishing them with a simple rosette is downright basic with a piping bag: simply insert the desired tip, fill the bag with icing and squeeze in the right direction! After you have got the piping bag mastered and it will not take too long you will pretty much own cupcakes. You might look around for some different recipes and experiment with flavours and fillings, but you will be ready for new challenges.

At that point, no one can take it away from you: you are a baker.