Every time I turn on my TV, there’s yet another cake competition to create the most elaborate, gravity-defying gateau with the most unusual frosting flavour.
Online, the algorithms have determined I have an interest in food and cooking, so my feed is filled with baking content for recipes and hacks with hyperbole ranging from “the world’s best ever cake” to “so easy you won’t believe it” to promises of pastries that will “change my life”.
To be frank, that’s never going to happen.
Firstly, I’m not a baker. I don’t have an oven in Hong Kong – my kitchen is a little small for that, so baking is automatically out, although there are YouTubers who want to convince me I can still make awesome bread using my air fryer. We’ll see.
Secondly, I cook but I don’t have the patience to bake. I’ll whack this into the pan, toss that with the sauce, but it’s too annoying to measure out every ingredient exactly.
My girlfriend, however, is the opposite. She enjoys the meticulous mixing of flour and butter, the precision of spreading frosting, and finely presenting her cakes like a fussy couturier.
I think it’s great that people are now so interested in baking. I remember a time – as late as the 1990s – when it was really difficult to find loaves here, other than really soft buns, dinner rolls and white sandwich bread.
For dessert pastries, richer folks would visit the fancy hotels for elaborate European cakes and French patisserie, but the average family relied on Maxim’s for their Swiss rolls and fresh cream sponge cakes.
That’s what I thought glamorous cake-making was for the longest time.
Studios and classes are now everywhere, including in malls, to teach kids and parents how to make their own cakey desserts and banana bread.
Oh Marie Antoinette, how we too must suffer in pain.
