Before I start, i just want to wish Folukemi and her sweetheart Adegbite who just got married earlier today a fruitful married life. Their wedding cake represents a flourishing and fruitful marriage, as indicated in this picture.
Folukemi, may the lines continually fall for you in pleasant places, keep your head up girl!..

Baking A Cake
The basic idea for baking is cream your sugar and butter thoroughly till your mixtures changes from light yellow to almost white colour, then add your eggs one at a time to enable each piece incorporate well, I usually separate my egg whites from egg yolks, work in the yolks first, then alternately add the white and flour. So the formula for baking will be:

(butter+sugar)+eggs+(baking powder+flour) + others (i.e flavour, mixed fruit) = Cake

You can modify your recipes once you understand the characteristics of each ingredients for example, I add little quantity of baking powder where I used a lot of eggs because they both act as raising agents.
Another every important rule of thumb, never overmix your flour because flour contains gluten, a ‘tactile-loving’ substance in flour that gives it elasticity just fold in gently especially when you are making a sponge cake, so you can achieve as fluffy a cake as possible. Use shallow pans for sponge cakes and deep lined pans for fruit cakes. Fruit cakes are denser and take longer to bake through so it’s important to line your pans to prevent it from burning and crusting at the top too quickly. It also helps to trap in heat that allows for even baking. For the chemistry of baking see : http://nzic.org.nz/ChemProcesses/food/6D.pdf

There are some recipes where u don’t need to cream butter and sugar together, when I use caster sugar and 100% butter, I simply thaw the butter and add every other ingredients in at once, blitz in a food processor and my cake mix is ready.
Once you’ve mastered the basics and gained confidence, you can personalize your cakes by recreating/inventing your own recipe to suit your preference.
I see cakes in three lights sweet, savoury and sour, and im a bit ambivalent about my preference. When I want something sweet and decadent, I go for sponge or chocolate cake, savoury – fruit cake and sour, cheesecake.
Recreating a recipe you like is a bit of an art once you’ve mastered the science or more like the chemistry of baking, so please experiment as much as you can afterall the best inventions are discovered serendipitously!
I found this website invaluable even though I’ve modified most of the recipes to suit my taste, I tell you, I’ve tried well over half the entire recipes on this site over the years so it’s a great place to start. If you live in Lagos, just go over to Yaba market in Tejuosho for those white plastic measuring cups and you are good to go!
The chemistry of Baking
I never understood the trick behind using baking powder for about 2 years of baking, until I took my time to understand the chemistry behind raising agents and cake ingredients. Have you ever wondered about the difference between baking powder and baking soda? reading this link: http://chemistry.about.com/cs/foodchemistry/f/blbaking.htm
The more you understand the principle behind baking, the more creative you can be as you interact with your ingredients, so dont be afraid to experiment, im currently trying out honey in place of sugar to see how i can make lovely cakes for diabetics without any catastrophe!


Let me leave it here for today so i can let u try out some new things...


Happy Baking!

My tip for the week: if you want to be a great sugarcrafter, study fine art and you’ll be fine!