By: Eric Liu

A few years ago, my mom decided to sign me up for a cake baking class with one of her friends. She brought along a friend of mine and his brother, and the three of us would be making the cake.

We helped my mom’s friend make the cake by mixing the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients, but as I was trying to mix the ingredients my friend’s brother hastily snatched the whisk from my hand, I couldn’t do anything at the time since he was way stronger than I was, but during this encounter, I learned something. An hour passed and we had finished the cake, it was delicious, and a really great memory of mine.

But when we went out of class my mom came up to me privately and said that you shouldn’t mess with people like my friend’s brother since you could end up getting hurt. This cake experience helped me to understand that fighting people that can be entitled and quick to anger can get you into a lot of danger.

Eventually, due to this event, it kickstarted my baking hobby, during the years till today I have made more than 80+ cakes, ranging from cupcakes to 6,8, and 10-diameter cakes. Every cake I have made has always been different, from either one with sweet frosting or just a normal fruitcake with plain flavors

When I first started making them they started off very pretty, yet ugly in a way. The cakes were very dense and burst on the inside due to the air bubbles, they wer still very delicious despite the flaws. But with each batch, I started to become better and better at it, through watching tutorials to get better at my mistakes and just trying over and over again at making cakes. With all this practice and passion, I was able to improve and get better at making cakes.

Making these cakes also increased my patience a lot, as you have to be very specific and slow in some steps so that in the end the product will be delicious and edible, and also that baking is often a long process in general. My patience mainly increased when I began helping to teach others. Most of the time it would usually be some of my friends whose parents had contact with my mom. With them doing things wrong most of the time, I had to be patient and help them to create a good end product.

Even with all the cakes I have made over the years, baking every single one of them was a very special hobby of mine. Baking was a kind of a way to show that I cared a lot about the people I made them for. Whenever I would make a cake it would usually take a few hours of my time, and it would cost about 40$.

I distinctly remember about a year back, one of my closest friends was about to move to another school, and at the end of the school year, I decided to make a cake for him. I had been planning this for about a month now. It took me many hours of my time but in the end, I was able to make a vanilla sponge cake, with buttercream frosting, with some fruit on the side that he liked.

When I brought it to school, everyone stared at the cake container in my hand, but I ignored them since I cared about my friend. I ate it in my class with him, and it was delicious. Even though we haven’t seen each other in a long time, we reminisce about the cake and we still contact each other from time to time.

Baking cakes is a huge part of my life, from being a tool that has helped me express my care towards others and has given me many life lessons, some of which that I have used in day-to-day life.