I booked a cake baking workshop in Subang Jaya for the second day of my trip. Initially, I wanted to learn how to make their lychee rose cake. There was also a jellycat macaron class that was very tempting because of how cute they were (the macarons had little signature jellycat feet). There was an offer to take three different baking classes in a single session at a discounted net price, but I didn’t have much wiggle room in my budget to accommodate three cakes, so I settled on just one.
I checked their February timetable. The lychee rose cake class was scheduled for outside my trip dates. The earl grey one, though, had available slots, so I went with that. Also, I had never tasted a tea-flavoured cake before. I wanted to know how the floral earl grey would taste when paired with chocolate ganache.
When I arrived, the ingredients had already been measured out and prepared in advance, so we could get started immediately. This is my first cake baking class, so there was a lot to absorb. Things like tapping the cake tin on the table to get rid of the air bubbles in the batter were news to me. My instructor would demonstrate each step first, then let me do it. He was also patient with all the bazillion questions I had as a non-cake baker. I was a little overwhelmed by all the steps in the recipe. Three weeks after the class, I’m re-reading the recipe again and at a total loss on how to recreate the earl grey jelly part, even with the instructions in bullet points. Somehow, I can’t even remember how we made the jelly the first time.
The decorative cream wedges on top had to be done at a certain angle and speed. They were arguably the hardest part of the cake. He handed me a piping bag and let me practice piping on top of a makeshift cake surface. I think I had about four bag refills’ worth of practice. It was really hard to get consistent shapes, even if they look deceptively simple. I’d overthink and squeeze the bag too much too fast, or too slow, or with the wrong amount of pressure, and the cream would come out in a different shape than the recipe intended. It was hard to get that nice little taper at the end.
Time to do the garnishing. He opened up a box of flowers and the kiasu part of me immediately reached for the big yellow carandula flower first (there was only one in the box). He also cut up a few sprigs of thyme for me. I think the cream started to soften and melt here while we were taking photos, so he put it in the fridge while I was waiting for my Grab to arrive.
I had planned to finish eating the entire cake before my trip was over, but I was so busy with activities that by the time I packed my bags, I still had a sizeable portion of cake left in the minibar. I packed it into my carry-on anyway. I didn’t have a choice. I mean, I couldn’t sit there in my room and eat the remaining 3/4s of the cake the night before flying off. And of course, crossing the South China Sea with a boxed up but otherwise unsecured cream cake in an overhead compartment bag went about as well as you’d expect.
I was almost afraid to open the box and look inside after I reached home from the airport. The cake box was no longer a square and was concave when I unpacked it, so it was disappointing but unsurprising to see my cake had followed suit and was now shaped more like a paramecium than like pac-man. But at least I had already taken pictures of it before it got smushed, and it still tasted okay. Obviously, the taste wasn’t as fresh as on the first one or two days, but still edible.
Cake baking workshop, done ✅