While you put on your apron and pull your sleeves back, let me tell you why I chose cake decorating.
As a child, I was always around my aunts, who were excellent bakers and cake decorators. You might think I was there to help them but no; I would be there to lick the batter or the frosting from the bowls. Little did I know that it was in the blood, and I would soon walk in their footsteps. I started baking cakes and experimenting when I was at university. I would bake cakes for birthdays, anniversaries or simply because I wanted to experiment.
Later, when I got married and came to Kuwait, a friend of mine introduced me to cake decorating. I took up the 9 week long class and since then there was no looking back. A couple of more cake decorating classes, trial and error, self study, YouTube videos, free cakes and Facebook forums, all account for 16 years of experience in cake decorating, leaving me no choice but to acclaim myself as a "Cake Artist", and you can see just how I evolved at https://www.facebook.com/cakeobsessed/.
Let's get to Baking Basics... we can always talk about me while we are at it.
You will need...
Basic Tools:
1. Couple of steel / glass mixing bowls to sieve and mix ingredients.
2. A fine mesh sieve to sift the ingredients.
3. Measuring Cups.
4. Measuring Spoons.
5. Liquid Measuring Cup.
6. Weighing Scale.
7. A knife to level out the ingredients.
8. A handheld electric mixer or standing mixer for mixing the cake batter.
9. A spatula to scrape the ingredients off the bowl.
10. Baking Pans (8" round, 12 cupcake pans, loaf pan)
11. Parchment paper (optional),
12. Cupcake liners for cupcakes
13. Ice cream scoop.
14. Oven (gas, convection, OTG).
15. Cooling racks.
Watch CupcakeJemma video on Essential Kitchen equipment guide for home baking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSxpnisWnl8 to learn more about basic baking tools.
Basic Ingredients:
A Dry Ingredients :
1. Flour - All purpose flour, whole wheat flour, cake flour.
2. Sugar - Fine sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar.
3. Baking Powder
4. Baking Soda
5. Cocoa powder of baking.
B Wet Ingredients:
1. Unsalted butter
2. Vegetable oil
3. Eggs
4. Milk / Buttermilk
5. Vanilla extract / essence.
1. All ingredients should be at room temperate before baking.
Remove butter, eggs, buttermilk from the refrigerator and let it arrive to room temperature
before you start mixing the ingredients.
2. All dry ingredients should be measured using a measuring cup (not liquid measuring
cup) or weighed using a weighing scale.
3. All dry ingredients should be mixed together and sifted twice.
4. All wet ingredients should be measured using a liquid measuring cup.
Woah! So many basics! But there is more to this... let's just take it one at a time.
