Hello Hive community, good to be back again 😃 after three months of inactiveness on this space. Honestly, it's a different awesome world here and I missed being active which was not intentional but I'm grateful to God for the gift of life and this opportunity.
Before I go ahead, hope you all are doing great?...
 Photo by me with my tablet on tripod stand |  |
Now who remembers 🤔 what I promised you from my intro post?
Okay, here it is, I promised to share my journey into the baking and curlinary world which began with an experiment and experience with my siblings and I and this is how it all played out.
Surprising her was all we thought about, who exactly? My mum. Her birthday was getting close, my siblings and I had a plan to surprise her with a cake and in order for the plan to be executed, one of my siblings bought a small recipe booklet along a road (we had no idea that something would go wrong with the recipe). We were all excited about the surprise we wanted to pull for her and I was in secondary school at that time (small me 😄).
A day to her birthday, my dad wasn't back from work and she wasn't at home either when my siblings and I began to carry out the plan. So, we took a big pot from the kitchen, went ouside to get some sand into it, the sand was a bit half-full of the pot (😄 chill guys, we didn't cook or eat the sand), we hid the pot and it wasn't one she usually used for cooking, so she didn't notice anything. We also bought the ingredients we needed with part of our savings. We waited for the night when my parents would go to bed... The saying: "When the Cat is away, the mice are free".
Night came, we pretended to have slept until my parents went to bed 😄, then we brought out the recipe booklet and started the process of baking the cake. We made sure all doors were closed and the little space beneath the doors were sealed to prevent the flavour from travelling to their room. We were so excited as we progressed (imagine the excitement on our faces, children planning a surprise for their mum), we had no idea of what the final look would be. We followed the recipe guide and assumed it was a perfect one. As baking is science, there was no way we could detect anything until the cake was completely baked and out of the oven.
We carried out the creaming process manually (with a bowl and a wooden spoon) because we didn't know how to use my mum's cake mixer. We took it in turn and trust me, it was fun. When we were almost through with the creaming and mixing process, the stove was lit and the pot of sand was placed on the fire to heat up the sand (this was a local oven we improvised at that time). The cake batter (the mixture of all the dry and wet ingredients of the cake recipe) was poured in a round cake pan, the pan was placed on the hot sand in the pot and the pot was covered. We gave it time to bake without interrupting the baking process.
It was time for judgement and the cake was fully baked and out of the pot. The cake looked different from what we knew cake to be 😄. Well, it wasn't a soft or moist cake, it was dry and a bit hard but we still felt good about it. What an experiment? We allowed the cake to get cool. Every other thing was cleared and tidied to leave no clue of what we did that night 😉.
O! We wished we knew how to decorate a birthday cake, but, see what we did, one of my brothers slightly opened a satchet of margarine to look like a round small writing nozzle tip and wrote, "Happy Birthday Mum". We were delighted to have achieved our plan and the idea of the finished work was the icing on the cake. We kept the cake on the dinning table, found a way to shield it and went to bed.
Morning came, my siblings and I had to wake up before my parents (it was a Saturday). We were done with the house chores before they came out for the family morning prayers. My Dad and mum couldn't believe their eyes and noses 😄, the flavour they perceived and sight of the cake... How did you people...? Who did...? When did...? What did...? All those questions were flying in the air. Seeing my mum very happy made us happier and my dad was proud of us that we could pull such a big surprise and sacrifice, knowing that we had not baked cake before.
We celebrated her birthday and enjoyed the cake (well, we had to 🤭), she was filled with joy, highly grateful and said to us, "You really did well, I will teach you how to bake cake properly". Let me add this, my mum is also skilled when it comes to baking and cooking and she was the one who baked my 1st year birthday cake and those of my siblings.
My first year birthday 😍
She baked occasionally before my experiment with siblings, I had no interest then but interested in eating her cakes 😁😋.
Few days after, she called us for the cake baking training and told us to watch her, she made use of her cake mixer and had no recipe guide around her, baking confidently like a pro. As we watched her, she chipped in tips and tricks about the whole baking process. Watching my mum from start to finish was all I needed to gain an insight into baking and that was how I fell in love with cake baking. I kept developing my baking skills on my own, learnt a bit of cake decorating from my elder sister, kept practicing and getting better until I had to attend some professional cake decorating trainings.
I kept creating and developing recipes to the extent of creating my own top notch recipes 😋, turning my passion into business and teaching a couple of people as well. It has all been fun with the challenges to learn from as well.
Now I know you must have enjoyed this experiment and experience and I can't wait to see you in the comment section. I know you have one or two things to type.
If you have passion for something, could be a hobby or skill, pursue it and you will derive more joy from it especially when you are able to use it to pass a message and influence people positively.
Thanks for stopping by and spending some time on my blog 🥰
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Love from @winanda ❤️