Confectionary debauching

You don't really need much - eggs, butter, flour, sugar and the cake is ready. Though before baking I decided to check what we have at home. Turned out that its not as easy as looks. You need a long list of different products that written in a long list on a sheet of paper slipped into my pocket on the way to the shop.

Store of local producers turned out to be to insuffecient in the offers, so I went on to the shopping giant Woolworths.  Yeah, shelves full with various stocks, but I proudly went on to the sugar shelf, because at home we have just less sweet brown sugar with lots of molasses added. Sugar packages lined up on shelves was as far as my eye could reach - from the lowest to the top shelf. Firstly diferent levels of brown sugar, then raw sugar and big choice of white sugar in of various stages of grinding. Of course, also sugar crystals. Besides all the variations of sugar available in different packages that vary not only in volume. One of the most important things here is to choose sugar in a resealable package, because if you leave it just open after a day your chosen sugar will be in a big solid brick. Oh, you can also get different combinations of sucrose, fructose or glucose, that all has come from the locally grown sugar cane.

The flour range does not differ from the sugar's. The choice is huge. Who could imagine that a flour packet may have  a contents??? But here they do, you can buy self-raising flour, flour with added fibre, flour with both, and then comes sifted, double or triple, bleached or not. After a long search I found "Pure white flour". On a packet there was written: contents: Wheat flour, inulin (source of fibre). Decided that fibre is not bad and put the packet in a shopping basket.

Potato starch caused more problems, after a long search on all sides of flour shelves, I decided to try a packet on the top shelf. After feeling a familiar texture, I took down the packet with "corn flour" on it. Apparently they work just as well. Backing powder in a wide range with various close products next to it, but the only one that had written on it "baking powder" had several E-numbers and rice flour as contents, but as raising agent it worked just fine.

It seemed to me that butter can't be a problem and after a long search I picked few packets that said just "butter" on them avoiding those with 'salted butter' written on them. Even butter here has ingredients - cream, water and salt. As that being the only option I chose one and went on. Later that turned out to be my biggest mistake, the butter was salted, but I learned about it only when tried to taste my first baked wonder.

I was lucky that eggs are no different than in Latvia, so I started baking. The result turned out to be good looking, the taste was greatly affected by the salt in the butter, but in general my first baking experience went just great!