From Sweet Cravings to Self-Taught Skills: My Baking Adventure

Growing up, I've always had a huge sweet tooth. Desserts were my weakness, but I couldn't always rely on my mom to whip up my favorites. So, around age 17 in Taiwan, I decided to take matters into my own hands. My first mission? A New York Cheesecake with that perfect biscuit base, it was my absolute favorite, after all!

The Puff Pastry Evolution

Fast forward to my second year of university in Türkiye, I took on a new challenge: cream puffs. Again, Mom was my first go-to for advice. I started with the classic, simple dough and a pure whipped cream filling. But then, I tried some amazing variants back in Taiwan, like 菠蘿泡芙 (Choux au Craquelin) with a crunchy cookie topping and various fillings. That really sparked my experimental side.

Learning from YouTube and online articles, I successfully made Choux au Craquelin. It's a bit of a process: make the cookie layer first and freeze it, then pipe the puff dough, top each with a frozen cookie piece, and bake. I also improvised the filling, my ultimate favorite is a mix of custard and whipped cream. When frozen, it tastes almost like ice cream!

From Personal Cravings to Pleasing Guests

My motivation for baking really shifted because of my dad's job. We often had guests, from businessmen to government officials, over for dinner. Mom would handle the main courses, and I naturally started taking charge of desserts. What began as satisfying my own sweet tooth evolved into a joy of crafting delicious treats that others would genuinely appreciate.

An Expanding World of Desserts

This new motivation pushed me to explore so many different kinds of desserts. I just wanted to try new things and discover what else was out there! I've made everything from fried ice cream, chocolate souffle, and egg tarts to pineapple cakes, swiss rolls, eclairs, donuts, churros, and even intricate mille crepe cakes and those viral Dubai chocolates.

After returning to Taiwan from Türkiye, I found myself missing some Middle Eastern delights. So, I challenged myself to recreate them here, successfully making baklava, sütlaç (rice pudding), and kunafah. I even had an amazing opportunity to rent a booth at a mosque's bazaar and sell these desserts, they were a huge hit!

Baking's Unexpected Life Lessons

Looking back, my self-taught baking journey has subtly but significantly influenced me in many areas:

• Sense of Accomplishment: It taught me the satisfaction of putting my best effort into something and seeing others genuinely appreciate the result. This extends to striving for excellence in all my work.
• Time & Task Management: Baking often involves waiting periods, for dough to ferment, chilling ingredients, etc. I quickly learned to use these "async" moments to clean up, prep the next steps, or tackle other tasks. This concept of asynchronous operations actually made understanding async functions in coding much more intuitive later on!
• Trial and Error: Many desserts are delicate, demanding precise ingredient amounts and timing. I failed countless times, but with strong motivation, I kept experimenting, improvising, and refining my methods until I succeeded. It's a real-world lesson in perseverance and iteration.
• Self-Learning: Just like coding, learning to bake meant diving deep into articles, countless recipes, comments sections, and YouTube tutorials to find what worked best for me. I learned to adapt, improvise, and meticulously take notes on my own recipe modifications for future success.