"There will always be first time in everything." I am using one of The Script's song's title as my blog title because of my experience today and this song just popped out in my head, hopefully won't get any copyright problem. What I did today is baking a cake. (standing applause? :p) finally, for the first time, I was baking cake from scratch, with no skill, knowledge in kitchen and limited tools. All I had was courage to bake, the courage knowing that everything I do will turn good, and for first time, I had faith in myself that I can do this! The reason is simply just to show myself that I can try doing something new that I haven't done before, step out of my comfort zone! And the first attempt of baking accomplished and the result is not too bad.
My concern was not really about the result, beautiful cake or tasty cake. Because my cake doesn't look like a cake, it looks like loaf of bread, but the taste is not so bad, it's edible. My main focus was more to just try baking a cake and convince myself that I'm not a disaster in the kitchen after all. As I have bucket list, one of the thing on the list is bake a cake and now I can tick that off and move on to next thing on the list. Basically, to keep myself trying, learning and managing things in life. Result is like a reward and I admire a journey better.
When I was making the cake, I was failed separating the egg white and egg yolk, almost gave up on first step but I tried again, I only needed 6 eggs but I'm pretty sure I've used more than 10 eggs. And with limited tools, no mixer or any equipment for making cake, I used my own hands to do everything. My hand was sore whisking the egg white until it's stiff and got me thinking I have to learn not to take anything for granted. Baking is a long process and step by step I tried mo make things right so the cake comes out good but there will always be something wrong along the way try to spoil it, no matter how hard I try to make things right, there will always be something try to take me down, in this case was the oven. I started making the cake since 3.30pm and finally got that out from the oven at 7pm, such a long time for baking small cake. I put the cake in the oven at about 5pm and my friend who owns the recipe said it will take around 45 minutes to bake. It turns out that the oven is not working properly, I put it on bake mode but I don't think the bake function was working, I have waited for almost 2 hours and the cake was still soft in the middle, not even cooked! But the top of the cake was already golden brown. Did I throw the cake away? No! I kept waiting and finally when it's done, such a relief. I did it and I didn't give up.
After all, the whole experience is exciting, from shopping, preparing and baking the cake. I now know why people here love cooking so much, being in the kitchen. It's different kind of feeling and excitement, such a joyful feeling be able to feed your loved ones. Food always can brings us together. Simple food is always good, start with what you have first!
with love,
-vc-
