The first cake in my memory
Where and when did you eat your first cake? Do you still remember the taste of it ? I suppose most people can hardly answer this question.For me , I think I do have the answer. I always think there was a cake I ate was the first one in my life , though I never asked my Mum to verify it , while I always took the cake as the first one , the one I ate in hospital when I was about 4-5 years old , this was in about Year 1976 , China.
I still clearly remember that it was a sunny afternoon, and my second brother picked me up from kindergarten, and then my Mum took me with her to visit my elder brother who was staying in hospital. In the patient room , my elder brother was laying in a bed , suffering from kind of illness which I had no idea at that time, and my Mum took some cake and a canned peach , which I was not sure I had never taste . For I was born in 1972 ,when I was at that age about 4-5 , we were still very poor , and cake and canned food were viewed as luxury food in our life, which we cannot afford in our daily life but only for some very special cases ,such as visiting a patient who we need should give some nutrition to him/her to help him/her to get recovery .
Though I had never taste what my Mum brought to my brother, but my little instinct told me they must be yummy. I would not remember how finally the cake came into my mouth instead of going to my brother ‘s mouth , while just at that moment I felt kind of sweetness and softness that I have never experience , and the cake impressed me so much that forged a forever memory in my life. I still remember in that after on the way back home , I asked my Mum what happened to my elder brother . She replied: he gets illed. At that time I was too little to understand correctly what is called illed. I was just thinking: What a luck ! If I could get ill and stay in a place called hospital, I might also have cake to eat everyday! And if I could not get ill, and it is also OK for my brothers to become ill and then I would have shared some cake from them . Since then I always connect staying hospital with yummy cake. This is my first memory of cake , which today , know it is called sponge cake.
45 Years flied away in a blink, that kind of cake nowadays in my hometown is called : old fashioned egg cake . While for me it is never an old fashioned egg cake , it is just the most yummy cake in my life , not then but also now . I think that kind of cake is not only my own memory but a memories of a lot of people at my age, for so many people in China share the recipe of it on Internet , try to recall our childhood. This simple small cake might among the first ones which put into local market after so called Culture Revolution which was an totally disaster for our country. (For baking is not typical Chinese tradition, and till now, majority families in China still have no oven at all, cake had not become an affordable ordinary food only after 1990s ) But who and how this cake was invented in a country without baking tradition , it has always kept as a sweet mysterious ,for me I went more than 35 countries around world and more than 10 cities in China , I never saw this cake be sold anywhere besides in my hometown.
And while the most wired thing is that : this simple cake , no matter how I tried with different recipes posted on Internet , I never succeed in copying to bake the exactly same yummy cake as I bought and buy in my hometown. What I bake is always little dryer than what I expected , I thought for the commercialized production of the cake it might be some emulsifier or special syrup to keep it moist and softer, making the texture more like cream melted in mouth.
Want try it ? Hereby I share the most common recipe of it shared by millions Chinese home baker, it might not so yummy as I has always been expecting, while do not worry it can never taste bad .And I swear if one day , I successfully decode the recipe of the cake what I buy from my hometown’s local market , I will disclose the secret to all of you, no matter it might include some emulsifier or not .People might say : hi, eating emulsifier is not healthy , while I still want to try , for it is not about my health , it is about my first sweet memory , about my family and my hometown which is thousands miles away . ……
Recipe: (homebaker version) (might do about 10 pcs)
Egg: 3pcs
Casting Sugar : 45g
Cake Flour : 75g
Butter : 15g (melt)
How to do :
1) pre-heat your oven about 170 c
1)Using electronic whisk , beat 3 pcs eggs with 45g sugar till pale white yellow color ( when you lift up your whisk, the batter drip down to the bown but will not disappear right way but after seconds )
2) sift into the cake flower into it and mix with the egg-sugar batter gentlely till now flour can be seen
3) Pour the melted butter into the batter and stir gentely till cooperated
4) Pour the cake batter into you cap cake pans (muffin paper should be put side in advance)
5) Bake it for about 20-25 min till the suface is set .
6) Take the cake out and cool them down .