My experience with baking the cake.

Friday 29^th May 09…. Last day of Henrike and Fikri in office, as they finished their Diploma thesis. So as a general customary in Germany, Henrike invited all the colleagues for “Kaffee und Kuchen”….or Coffee and Cake. Yesterday she decided to bake the cake own her own, which is very common practice. So I asked her if I can help her and she agreed. In fact I don’t know how to bake a cake, and this was a great opportunity for me to learn. Fikri is probably as lazy as me, and he decided to buy the same from supermarket.

So… the story begins from yesterday evening after the office. I and Henrike first went to my place to pick up Camera, which I was in deadly need to capture some nice moments in the evening. Next halt was a supermarket to buy cherries for the cake.

On the way to Henrike’s home in Witten (about 10 km from Dortmund), she showed me many farming fields and “Bauhof”.. kind of a big houses located near the fields. At we reached her place with a large field in the backyard. Away from main city, the place was very calm, and green all over.. The place was really beautiful and worth leaving.

I met Henrike’s mother, father, brother and a friend of him there. I shall admit, it was really nice to see such big family leaving together in Germany. I wore an apron to protect my office cloths and we started baking the cake.

(me and Henrike)

First layer of cake was made up of wheat, backing power, butter and sugar. These were thoroughly mixed and layer was applied on greased surface of baking tray. Then came the next layer, with same ingredients, but in addition “Kakao” was also mixed.

Once these tow layers were evenly spread, Cherries were inserted from the top and pressed till it passes through both layers. Now the first phase of preparation was over, so Oven was set to heat up and we waited before putting the baking plate into oven.

(base layers with Cherries)

Mean while, Henrike showed me her living room and “Klavier” (Piano). By now, the oven was almost heated, the baking tray was put in, and temperature set to 200°C. Now we need to wait for next twenty minutes at least, so Henrike showed me how to play Piano. She taught me how to read the notes… believe me, I never though it would be that difficult.

Then she started playing some of the notes she knew. Amazing!!! I was just speechless for a time being. Suddenly for me, the respect for all musicians specially the one who play Piano, raised more that any thing.

(Henrike und Klavier)

Now since 20 minutes were about to get over, we started making top layer of vanilla pudding. First milk was set to boil. In parallel vanilla pudding powder, butter etc were mixed and pudding layer was prepared. The baked cake and the pudding layer both set to get cooled.

This left us with some more time, so Henrike took me and Elena for a small walk around and showed new water fountain installed in the house, the “Bauhaus” where tractors and other farming equipments were parked. We also met Max, the “Jaghund”.. the hunting-dog. Its was full of fun seeing all this things.

By now, both the baked cake and vanilla pudding were cold enough and third layer of vanilla pudding was put on the cake….. it was so tempting, that one can not resist itself from eating it. I was just about to take a piece from the tray to taste… but was stopped by Elena and Henrike.

(henrike, Elena and me)

Finally we put the tray into cold fridge in the basement, so that it can be eaten next day with one more layer of chocolate coming on the top…. I could not stop dreaming how great it would look and taste tomorrow.

Today in the office when I saw the cake… I just couldn’t believe myself helping Henrike to bake it yesterday.

(the last piece of Cake...)

This was my first experience of baking cake. I must say, baking a cake is for sure not easy task.. but looking at output, its worth taking up. As Julia (one of the office colleague) said, one must bring self baked cakes for the last day “Kaffee und Kuchen” gathering…. I think probably I will bake my own cake on my last day of Master’s thesis.

Hemant Nagda

29^th May 09, Dortmund