Baking, Friendship, and a Dash of Teaching: The Delicious Love-filled Journey
By the end of May, I received a message from a young lady whom I met a year ago, asking me to guide her in making a mango rare cheesecake as a surprise gift for her boyfriend's birthday. Last year was a great success! Her boyfriend was so shocked and happy!
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This year, having trouble finding other surprising ideas, she decided to make another one for her boyfriend again. Although it may not be a surprise anymore, yet she enjoyed handcrafting, and they would get a yummy cake to eat for the big day. After some discussion via Instagram, we decided to make a Chocolate Rare Cheesecake with strawberry jam, with decoration similar to one of the custom chocolate cakes I posted on Instagram a while ago.
I am impressed by her dedication. Last year, she spent 3 days after work to complete the mango cake from scratch. Back then, I was living downtown, and she was working up north and west. This year I moved to an area in between her workplace and living place, which saved her a bit of traffic time. Yet she's working full-time now, and the cake design she chose was a bit complicated. So, it turned out she still had to come 3 days after work to complete the chocolate cake.
On the first day, I guided her to bake a chocolate chiffon cake, make an Oreo crumb base, and prepare fresh strawberry jam; the 2 hours went by really quickly. The next day, we made the two cheese layers and assembled the cake body, as well as tempered chocolate to mold a cacao pod. On the last day, we mixed the dripping chocolate ganache, crafted tuxedo chocolate strawberries, and finished up the whole cake decoration. There was a lot of time when we were waiting, waiting for the cake to be baked, waiting for the chocolate to cool down...and we chatted a lot. She changed her day job recently, started working for a mainstream company as a project coordinator. She seems to enjoy the atmosphere of her current work. Instead of treating its employees as robotic laborers, the new company focuses on employee's work-life balance and team building. As well, she's in the middle of applying for permanent residency in Canada, which is her main worry at the moment as she got stuck in attaining some of the documents. In exchange, I shared my long house-hunting experience since last October with her.
Baking with friends provides a channel to talk and share our daily lives, ups and downs. We are more like friends instead of teacher/student or service provider/client.
Thank you for coming back to me!
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