Baking: Kate's History

I belong to a family who knows how to bake and cook. I've always known my mother to be a great baker. My mother's sisters are good in it, too. My sister was able to bake her own chocolate cake when she was in high school. My father and his family are good cooks. I am neither. I am no more than just a helping hand, a spectator or a mere devourer.

I was maybe 18 or 19 when I first attempted to bake my first cake! I was home alone and maybe I was hungry or cravin' for something sweet or just want to prove to myself that I can do it, I grabbed the famous family recipe for chocolate cake which my sister rewrote in an index card for her convenience. I started mixing the ingredients until I came to this ingredient which just said 'baking'. I was confused whether it was baking soda or powder but thinking that baking soda would be an odd ingredient to a cake, I used baking powder. I thought baking soda is just for cleaning. The end result is… never mind…. our dog loved it, anyway. I never bake anymore after that. I know, its just not my skill. I helped out my sister and mother when called for, that was it.

Until about two years ago, I began to explore baking again. I bought a small electric oven and baked my first successful chocolate cake. Of course, I used baking soda. Hurray!

Then I got my hands on chiffon cake which is a delicate cake to do. When I inverted the tube pan after the cake was done, the cake slid off. Try to imagine how I caught with my bare hands a cake that just came out of the oven. It was frustrating but since the taste was good, I didn’t lose hope.

When I resigned from work, I experimented and made cupcakes out of our well-loved chocolate cake recipe. I scouted for boiled icing recipe from the net and made my first frosted cupcake. Boy, you should have seen the smile on my face and see how proud I was with my first creations. To me, it was the prettiest I've ever seen.

I started selling these to our neighborhood. I'd bake and do house to house selling or let the kids in the block do the selling for me for a little commission. I also tried consigning them in one stall in my son's school and in other private schools nearby. The cupcakes and the brownies were a hit. But it never lasted long. More stalls in my son’s school opened up and my cupcakes lost popularity. Students preferred to buy from the newly opened Japanese cake store. So I stopped selling to both schools.

But as the saying goes, when a door closes, it doesn’t stay close forever LOL! I opened an online store after that to test the market. The rest is history. Or, the rest was(?) history.