About Me
Welcome to Happy Home Baking, an online journal about my baking and cooking adventures!
I picked up not more than 1% of my mother's skills. So I began my lone baking journey with simple bakes like muffins, cookies and quick breads. It took me a while before I baked my first sponge cake, then my first bread, and much longer down the road, I attempted my first chiffon cake. It was a slow journey since I am a cautious baker who doesn't have the courage to try out new ingredients or things that I have not even tasted before. I hope I will be able to move on to making Chinese pastries in time to come.
I have not attended any baking classes or workshops, not even a demo session. I would love to give the excuse that I do not have the luxury of time to attend classes. But the truth is, I am simply too lazy to attend a class. Since I have never aspired to become a professional baker or a pâtissier there is no motivation for me to accelerate the learning process. I prefer to take my time and explore a little about baking each day.
With my limited knowledge and lack of skills, I shuddered at the thought of misleading my readers in anyway. I really hope I am not the blind leading the blind. So I take extra care to make sure my instructions are clear, sometimes to the extend that a simple recipe became so complicated and long-winded!! My intention is to make sure that anyone, especially those who are baking the first time would be able to follow the steps and be successful on their first try, or at least reduce any failures to the minimal. No one likes a kitchen mishap.
It takes time and effort to craft out the recipes especially when the original ones are not in English. Sometimes I do get a little annoyed when I got to know what I have written has been cut-and-pasted, paraphrased and pass off as someone else's recipe. So I do appreciate anyone of you who wish to use or adapt any of the recipes I posted in this blog to at least provide a link to the relevant post. Thank you.
I borrow cookbooks from the library. I do not own that many cookbooks as I realised that most of the time I only use 1 or 2 recipes from each book, and a couple of my book were left collecting dust on the shelf.
Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog and I hope that you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing every single one of my post.
About Me
I am a stay-at-home-mom with two lovely school age children and a great hubby. When I am free, I like to play with flour, sugar, eggs and butter.How I Started this Blog
During the first few months as a SAHM, I thoroughly enjoyed the 'freedom' to be able to be my own boss. Very soon, I got bored with the monotonous routine. Things only started to change after I bought my oven. I began spending my free time baking, reading up cookbooks and surfing from one great food blog to another. The next thing, I found myself taking photos of the things I baked and started spamming my friends' mailboxes with my photos and updates on what I was up to in my kitchen. This went on for several months before my friends began urging me to start my own blog. With their encouragements, coupled with the inspirations by the many food bloggers out there, I became a flogger myself.My Baking Journey
My mother is the only person on earth whom I will regard as a true domestic goddess. My interest in baking stems from watching and helping her bake from scratch at a young age. There was never a shortage of delicious homemade desserts, cakes and pastries. She showed me how to make a rainbow swiss-roll, a Christmas log cake, breads, buns, Chinese pastries, Malay delicacies and nonya kuehs. She impressed me with her choux pastry swans and kueh lapis. She taught me how to wrap and pleat a Chinese bau and I practised on her leftover doughs before I could make pleats on curry puffs that were almost as pretty as hers.I picked up not more than 1% of my mother's skills. So I began my lone baking journey with simple bakes like muffins, cookies and quick breads. It took me a while before I baked my first sponge cake, then my first bread, and much longer down the road, I attempted my first chiffon cake. It was a slow journey since I am a cautious baker who doesn't have the courage to try out new ingredients or things that I have not even tasted before. I hope I will be able to move on to making Chinese pastries in time to come.
I have not attended any baking classes or workshops, not even a demo session. I would love to give the excuse that I do not have the luxury of time to attend classes. But the truth is, I am simply too lazy to attend a class. Since I have never aspired to become a professional baker or a pâtissier there is no motivation for me to accelerate the learning process. I prefer to take my time and explore a little about baking each day.
Recipes
Close to 90% of the recipes I posted here were my first attempts. Many of them turn out quite well. I attribute this to following recipes that are easy and simple, using very basic ingredients, nothing too complicated that would confuse a novice baker. I also follow recipes as closely as possible, sticking to the ingredients called for and use the recommended pan size. Every time I try something new, I will make sure my mind is very clear with the instructions given. My tolerance for failure is pretty low, as long as I can help it, I do not want to waste any food or ingredients. I tend to follow recipes that are written by Japanese pastry chefs. These cookbooks come with clear illustrations and very detailed explanation on each step and even the reasons behind why we need to do certain thing or take that extra step.With my limited knowledge and lack of skills, I shuddered at the thought of misleading my readers in anyway. I really hope I am not the blind leading the blind. So I take extra care to make sure my instructions are clear, sometimes to the extend that a simple recipe became so complicated and long-winded!! My intention is to make sure that anyone, especially those who are baking the first time would be able to follow the steps and be successful on their first try, or at least reduce any failures to the minimal. No one likes a kitchen mishap.
It takes time and effort to craft out the recipes especially when the original ones are not in English. Sometimes I do get a little annoyed when I got to know what I have written has been cut-and-pasted, paraphrased and pass off as someone else's recipe. So I do appreciate anyone of you who wish to use or adapt any of the recipes I posted in this blog to at least provide a link to the relevant post. Thank you.
My Baking Tools and Equipment
You can call me stingy or thrifty, but growing up in a family with 10 mouths to feed had taught me to be able to do more with less. I have only a few basic but useful tools...an electric hand-held mixer (a hand-me-down which was bought in the mid 80s), a manual whisk, a wooden spoon, a spatula and a few baking pans and mixing bowls. I use a cheap diet scale to measure my ingredients, hopefully I could upgrade to a digital one soon. My oven is a 20 litre Tefal tabletop electric oven. It is really small and could only fit in one tray that is no bigger than 12" in length. I used to own a bread machine, but it broke down after 3 years of extensive use. The message I want to bring across is: you can start baking with just a few basic tools no fancy gadgets are necessary and it will be a good excuse to blame the tools if your finished bakes are less than satisfactory;)I borrow cookbooks from the library. I do not own that many cookbooks as I realised that most of the time I only use 1 or 2 recipes from each book, and a couple of my book were left collecting dust on the shelf.
A Note on My Photos
Food photos post on this blog were all taken with a Canon Powershop G3 which we bought in 2004. I don't know much about photography and so my photos are all point-and-shoot shots. Whenever I need to take photos of my food I simply set my camera to the Auto-mode, turn on the Macro function, turn off the flash lights and click away. I depend very much on natural lighting, so please bear with me if some of the photo images appear dull and grainy when the lighting conditions was not favourable.Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog and I hope that you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing every single one of my post.
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