Baking has always intrigued me. I admired those who could bake. My first experience of eating home made baked goodies were those of the Christmas cakes and biscuits brought over by one of our neighbors near my mum's home. There were a variety of assorted baked goodies that were tasty and more importantly, she baked them herself. I was very apprehensive of baking, one because we did not have a conventional oven to bake and also, the cakes that were baked in a microwave oven do not have that particular taste that a well baked cake has which comes out of a conventional oven. There is a difference ,trust me. And secondly, I had no idea how to make a cake from scratch and did not know how to go about all the measuring or the whipping or using a whisk or using the right amount of butter etc etc.
Our kitchen in the apartment has this huge conventional oven below the cooktop and I was not using it. Well, I did use it to store my utensils...
It kept looking at me begging me to make 'proper' use of it. Every night, once I retired, my mind was filled with thoughts of trying it once and burning up the cake or worse, the whole oven going up in flames!!
Weird dreams and fears apart, I still wanted to bake. So I started on my quest of learning the basics - reading up articles on baking, scouring the Internet for the right ways of baking, simple recipes to start with, the type of baking dish to be used etc.
After a lot of researching, I stumbled upon this recipe which looked quite easy. I had most of the ingredients in my pantry, so I started with the process, apprehensively though, checking the measurement of the ingredients again and again at every step of the recipe. Finally, with a prayer on my lips, I shut the oven door with my batter in a pan. I patiently waited for the timer to go off, all the while hoping that the oven does not blow up! When the timer beeped, I sprang to take the pan out from the oven , again hoping that the bread is not undercooked.
And voila! I had my first perfectly baked bread!!! My masterpiece.... it sure felt like that.... There was so much joy in my heart that I felt I would burst.....
Here you go, make your very own masterpiece
Banana Bread
