Join me in my journey as I take baking classes, research cookbooks and baking blogs, visit local bakeries and restaurants, and then try my hand at home as an amateur baker.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
My First Creative Specialty Cake Rediscovered!
While I just became interested in cake decorating this past year, it dawned on me that this interest isn't exactly new. When my son Dean turned one in October 1981, the Dodgers and Yankees were in the World Series--thus the theme for his party! (Dodgers won!) And my first creative cake!!
I remember those days of trying to bake the cool kids' cakes and not quite making it happen. Dean's cake looks great! How quickly those days fly by, right?
Something happened to me after taking an unexpected early retirement from teaching English in Los Angeles. I had planned to spend every precious minute reading, writing short stories, and working on a rewrite of a novel. The last place I expected to find myself--literally and figuratively--was in the kitchen; yet there I was, flipping through a book called The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart and getting excited at the thought of attempting to bake pain a l'ancienne, a rustic French bread made through a process of slow fermentation. Well bake it, I did--and it actually turned out pretty darn good to my surprise!
Now what's followed has been a worldwind of baking mania as I've spent evenings reading--not Virginia Woolf or Shakespeare--but cookbooks (on baking of course!) or searching the web for local baking classes and baking blogs.
I've attended lectures (Peter Reinhart's in fact!), completed the Professional Baking I class at The New School of Cooking in Culver City and studied specialty cake design at the School of Confectionary Art at Cake Crumbs in Encino, CA.
And finally, I decided to combine my two loves, writing and baking, so I can share my Baking Daze in LA, past, present, and to come.
I remember those days of trying to bake the cool kids' cakes and not quite making it happen. Dean's cake looks great! How quickly those days fly by, right?
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