CAKE THAT’S EASY AS PIE
Art of baking demystified
Call her the cake whisperer.
Jessica McGovern can coax elegant layer cakes, mini cupcakes, frosted loaves and fruit-studded tarts out of one simple recipe that calls for just four ingredients.
At her Verdun baking school, The Lincoln Apartment Bakery (named after the downtown kitchen where she began baking for friends and neighbours when she arrived in Montreal four years ago), McGovern aims to demystify the art of baking.
Her classes, for beginners and experts alike, are fun, hands-on sessions for small groups where everyone gets involved measuring, sifting, mixing. She chooses only recipes that are quick to make and won’t be messed up by a mistake or two and calls for ingredients readily available at the grocery store.
The whole point, says McGovern, is to get people baking at home. Just for the fun of it.
So when students arrive for class at her sunny locale above Lefebvre & Filles on LaSalle Blvd., they are handed a mimosa and a polka-dot apron. When they leave, they take home a box of sweets. In between, they bake and talk and laugh while McGovern shares her baking secrets.
“People think they need 16 ingredients and two hours and a whole lot of confidence to bake a cake,” McGovern says. “But that’s not true. I can teach anyone to bake.”
One of her favourite recipes, the Victoria sponge cake, is testament to that. It calls for just four basic ingredients: flour, sugar, eggs and butter mixed together with an electric mixer, or even by hand with a spoon, then poured into a greased pan and baked in a 350 degree F oven for 30 minutes, or so.
“Everything I do is rustic and a bit “more-or-less,” she says. “I share tips and tricks for avoiding failure. But I also teach how to fix mistakes when they happen.”
And that, she says, is a huge relief to many novice bakers, who are happy to hear that it’s no calamity to find yourself short one egg ( just add a little milk) or looking down at a Bundt cake that fell apart coming out of the pan ( break it into chunks, add cream and voilà, it’s a trifle.)
McGovern grew up in the west of Ireland in a family of enthusiastic home bakers who whipped up cakes and cookies and buns with aplomb. McGovern was just five years old when she first cracked an egg and baked a cake.
Even when she’s not working, she bakes almost every day: when she’s invited to dinner, when someone is sick, when she herself is feeling blue or when she’s happy.
“I bake every day, just for the fun of it. I bake because I am hungry, and when I want to feel that I have accomplished something,” she says. “I bake to show someone I care about them and I bake out of curiosity when I see something I want to try.”
McGovern wishes everyone had access to the kind of joy she feels when the kitchen fills with the aromas of sugar and spice. But so many people she talks to are afraid to bake. They think it’s complicated and time-consuming.
She says becoming a master pâtissier does require advanced skills, but baking a quick and easy cake that is moist and delicious doesn’t.
“I’m not a classically trained pâtissière or a grand-master chef. I learned to bake from my mother and my grandmother and I took it from there,” she explains, sitting for tea at a long white table set with pretty platters of sweets, just out of the oven. “I want to show people quick and easy and simple recipes they, too, can make with stuff they already have in their kitchens.”
McGovern says she wants to counter popular perceptions that baking is an exact, complicated and intimidating science without room for creativity or spontaneity — or even ineptitude.
McGovern said she began to do improv baking during her many years of travels, which took her to eight countries around the world. In out-of-the-way places and illequipped kitchens in China, Ghana, France and Argentina, she substituted margarine or oil for butter and added a little milk when she was short of eggs. She used a loaf pan when she couldn’t find a cake pan. And to her amazement her baking still turned out.
The Lincoln Apartment Bakery’s classes, which McGovern offers in English, French and Spanish several times a week, have proved wildly popular. They are now offered on weeknight evenings and on weekends. They run two hours and range in price from $45 to $60 per person. The themes change with the seasons, and with McGovern’s whims. She has done classes on pavlova and tiramisu and for November there are sessions devoted to healthier doughnuts, holiday baking, macarons and cake decorating.