My name is Boss Cheung, avid amateur baker, cake sommelier and least importantly, a first year medical student. Here’s an insight into my life in baking – the ultimate time out for me.
Whilst romanticising university life before I started university, I wanted to start something new; baking. My sister was already an avid baker so I was inspired by her (alongside my passion for baked goods) to give it a shot as I said to myself “If people on TikTok can do it, I can do it too.”
So now that I can bake, why is it something I keep coming back to time and time again?
For me, I find baking to be a relaxing way to be creative whilst also getting a little reward at the end of it. I like being able to modify recipes to what I have and what I want in my creation, there’s no limitation on what I can do with my bakes which really allows me to live my baked goods fantasy. Besides the creative aspect, the actual steps taken to get to the final project are quite exciting. I get to use various techniques which may seem intimidating at first, but once you get the hang of it, you just feel the satisfaction of completing another step in the process. Overall, the entire process of baking is like a pick your own adventure game and allows me to explore a much different avenue than the one that medicine takes me down.
My favourite bake
If you were to ask, I’d say it would have to be my end of semester cake after exams. I had a full-on day (and night) of celebrating and arrived home at the very reasonable time of 6 am. Instead of sleeping, I felt a passion in myself at that time to bake a three-tiered cake – but not just any cake – a red velvet cake. I had lined my cake tins, pre-heated the oven and prepped my batter with nothing stopping me but the lack of batter – it turns out sleep deprivation and measurements don’t go well together. So, after another hour of prepping another bowl of batter, it was finally time to bake off my cake.
Did I get time to rest during the baking time? No! It was now time to prep a batch of vanilla cream-cheese frosting big enough to cover a whole three-tiered cake. After 800g of cream cheese, 500g of butter, 500g of icing sugar and a whole lot of vanilla bean paste, I had finally made enough to cover my cake. It was then time for me to test out a shiny new gadget I had gotten for a Secret Santa before exams, my spin table for decorating cakes. With a little bit of spin and a lot of icing, I had managed to decorate a whole three-tiers before 11 am. Graced with eye bags but blessed with a cake – I put on one candle and proceeded to do a photoshoot before digging into these glorious three layers.
My go-to bake
Just like my favourite bake – my go to bake is something red velvet whether it be a cake or a cookie. I will die on this hill that red velvet is the ultimate flavour as it melds vanilla and chocolate in this velvety texture no other flavour can come close to. It brings me comfort when I’m happy or sad, hyper or exhausted. I could make a red velvet cake at any moment and devour it in one sitting. I also enjoy the simplicity the flavours hold as I can get quite experimental with my modifications – for example using caramelised white chocolate in red velvet cookies or adding a cheesecake layer to a red velvet cheesecake brownie. I can get creative and make my favourite flavour even better!
So who gets all the yummy sweet treats?
Its all for me. Putting the joke aside, as I sadly don’t have the metabolism to eat all of what I bake, I give my bakes to a wide variety of people. From my flatmates, to the time I made a batch of thirty cookies and gave them out during lecture, many people have tried my famous baked goods. I also, since second semester, have tried to bake for my PBL class, with me taking any suggestions and putting them into practice. Recently, I made a lemon drizzle cake for one session and red velvet cookies with white chocolate for our second session. These have all been a great hit with the PBL class and will continue to be a tradition for many sessions to come.
I also like to bake for events I host, or others host and for birthdays. During the winter holidays, me and my friends that were still in Edinburgh decided to host a hot pot – with my contribution being bolo bao (pineapple buns in English, even though they don’t even contain any pineapple!) Bolo bao are a traditional Hong Kong bakery-style sweet bread with a crisp cookie on top and would have to be one of my go to’s when visiting a Chinese bakery. As for birthdays – I had made an oreo tiramisu for two of my friends’ birthday in collaboration with another avid baker in my year. We decided to make the sponge fingers from scratch which required so many eggs and a lot of patience with the piping bag but overall, this turned out to be an amazing bake that everyone enjoyed. Finally, my most recent birthday bake again involved red velvet and that was a two-tiered red velvet cake with a lot more effort put into the decoration.
My most popular bake
After going around and asking my friends what my best bake was, I got a variety of responses ranging from cookies, red velvet cupcakes and pineapple buns. Everyone said that I had a good variety of bakes that I’m proficient in and that anything that I bake they would want to try. From birthdays and events that I’ve baked for I’m always left with such an empty tray and sadly no leftovers for myself – im specifically taking about the Oreo tiramisu here.
To end this little baking blog, I want to describe what I see in the future of baking and my future baking career. I envision myself to still be an avid baker in the future and hopefully by the time I reach second year I will have achieved my sourdough dream where I have a freshly made loaf daily! I’m also quite interested in making more healthier (and unhealthier) recipes to cater for more people and so I can have a variety of recipes to choose from when I’m craving a sweet treat. Lastly, by the time I reach retirement age (which will probably be 88) I want to open a little micro bakery in a small town and serve the locals freshly baked goods from 9 till 3. Thank you for reading my little baking exert and I hope I’ve inspired more people to bake (or try my baked goods).
