Win an online baking course with Grace Stevens

The last time I baked a cake it flopped. It did not rise. It was hard. It still had a sweet taste, but I’m not sure what I did wrong. Maybe I really needed this baking course to give me the tips I needed. If you want to get your baking expertise an upgrade, enter now for this baking course, you’ll learn a lot!

Grace Stevens has a website where you can choose which course you want to do. She has the creamed in method (blueberry and lemon cake), the whisked in method (vanilla bean sponge cake), chiffon cake (granadilla) which is the one I did, and enriched yeast (hot cross buns). She also has a whole section devoted to Buttercream piping techniques. If you’re into icing these are some beautiful icing flowers.

Nicky and I had a look at all the options and chose the Chiffon cake. I guess he was hoping I would do a better job this time around.

Grace’s course consists of a video which was about 20 minutes long. There are all sorts of useful tips in this video that you would not get from a normal recipe.

Some of the insights I learnt:

• All about the baking tin, what kind to use for this kind of cake and why it should not be greased on the sides.

• How to place the cake in the oven.
• How to turn this cake recipe into another version e.g. orange cake, chocolate cake or a coffee cake.
• How to fold the egg whites into the mixture.
• Step by step instructions on how to make the cake.
• Why certain ingredients are used. This was a major insight for me who always leaves out salt and doesn’t much care about the type of sugar used. I actually went back to the shop to get the caster sugar because of what Grace said.

So how did the baking go?

Nicky and I had a lot of fun with this. Baking is a great way to keep kids busy. (I think they just love licking the bowls)

First of all I spent a lot of time cutting open granadillas for the pulp. Nicky was very amused by all of this.

Then we sifted the dry ingredients. Since Grace suggested sifting 3 times I got out 2 bowls and Nicky sifted between them.

I started separating the eggs and Nicky was so intrigued by this he begged and begged me to help him in this task. So once I had my five yolks and now we just needed more whites, I allowed him to have a go. He proved up to the task and we got the amount we needed.

Nicky started stirring everything together after making a well in the middle of the dry ingredients. He is used to doing this when we make muffins so he considers himself a pro at this. He did the mixing while I was busy with the egg whites.

At one horrific point the whole mixing bowl fell on the floor but it was right way up, thank goodness!

Anyway we got the whole thing folded in while Nicky licked various bowls. By this time the oven was ready. I think it’s very useful to do a recipe with a video because you do it properly – the way it was meant to be done.

Guys, I am really not a good cook or baker so all things considered the cake came out well and I was pleased with the result. My oven often over does things so it was maybe a bit hard around the edges but the inside was lovely.

I did fail with the icing. I added too much of the granadilla pulp and it was a bit too runny. However it still tasted good.

Would you like to try baking too? Simply comment below and you could win one of Grace Steven’s online courses.

Terms and Conditions:

1. This competition will run for a week. The winner will be announced on the Facebook page, and emailed.
2. This competition is open to South African residents only.
3. The prize is not transferable.
4. If you have won on SA Mom Blogs in the past 3 months you will not be eligible to win this competition.
5. If you win the same prize on another site then you forfeit this one.

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