"If you had asked either of us to go into a grocery store and return with the ingredients necessary for making a cake-say, a Black Forest cake-we would've found the eggs, the flour, the sugar, and the butter. Possibly one or the other of us would've picked out a raising agent, although without any real sense of why. As for the "Black Forest" part, maybe one of us would've grabbed some cherries or some chocolate,"
"We would've known a custard when we tasted one. But crème anglaise was just goop; crème patisserie was simply another goop. All cake was cake; a jaconde sponge could just as easily have been something you use in the shower. Victoria sponge, for all we knew, might've been a Dickens character. Madeleine was a little French girl with appendicitis."
"For the most part we cannot be outfoxed by weird ingredients, as we have now developed a decent enough intuition about what a given substance is meant to accomplish within a recipe. We have experience, and sense memory, and so we now have pretty good ideas, for example, about what a custard should feel like not just when it is entering your mouth, but when it is thickening in a saucepan."
Two home bakers began with minimal baking knowledge in 2022 and often chose incorrect ingredients or misunderstood recipe roles. Early confusions blurred distinctions among custards, sponges, and cakes, and many terms felt meaningless. Over three years and 29 bakes, persistent practice developed technical skills, sensory awareness, and intuition about ingredient functions. They now recognize custard thickening, estimate batter texture, and adjust for odd ingredients using experience and sense memory. Some uncertainty about specific textures remains, but overall confidence and competence in home baking have increased markedly.
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