MY CAKE OBSESSION
The Beginning of an Obsession
Most organizations would call this "Our History", but I choose to call it "Dee's Cake Obsession"
The year was 2006. The supermarket was Tesco. The item was flour; plain flour to be exact. The aim… Well … to bake, I guess.
Baking isn't something which I can say I've always had a passion for. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I could pay a tiny fortune for the mouthfuls of expertly made fruit cake which I had sampled at the trillions of weddings I’d attended in the past. Never had I imagined that I would be dressed in an apron neck-deep in flour and sugar.
Today, I’m the exact opposite. Every time I look at pretty colors in a magazine, I instantly think of "skittles splashed all over a smoothly iced Vickie Sponge or rainbow-colored cupcakes". If I happen to glance at a wedding dress in the shops, then bang!!! “Couture model showing off a simple but chic wedding dress standing elegantly on a golden platform”..... And yes, I’m still talking cakes.
So how did this cake love begin?
I remember the first cake I ever made. We were at home in Nigeria, and my sisters and I wanted to surprise our highly professional mother with a banana bread piece; a recipe which we had extracted from the Sesame Street books. To be fair, this was many moons ago and we’re all still healthier than ever, so I guess you can say the cake turned out just right.
But the passion didn’t develop then...
Whilst in my 2nd Year at uni, I realized that no matter how hard I tried, my lecturers would always criticize my work. I’d stumbled across a particular website, and as a stress reliever after another rubbish week of lectures, I would pick one recipe each Friday and attempt to make it. (Not that they ever got to taste it!).
Thinking about it now, maybe if I had just booked a few sessions with each lecturer to review my work, then maybe I’d actually get to understand what it was that they were looking for.
But where’s the fun in that? ....so I decided to bake instead.
In less than a year I was churning out Fruit cakes, Sponge cakes, and Banana cakes, Cheesecakes, Chocolate Cakes, Muffins, Cookies, Brownies and Biscuits. Cakes made in the oven, and even those made in the microwave. I was unstoppable. And no matter where I was, I would always take a picture of whatever I produced, just for keepsakes, little did I know the value this would one day bring.
You’d think that in my final year at university, I’d stop. Well, nope. I carried on regardless and even took it one step further.
...I began to ice my cakes.
At first, I cheated and would use ready-made icing. Thanks, Dr. Oetker!!! But before you could say anything, I began producing my own icing. OK, maybe not producing, but controlling the consistency of what I slathered onto my baked babies…
Copyright © 2022 Dee's Cakes n Bakes.
