Baking runs in the family

Baking runs in our family. I'm not a self taught baking genius that magically decided to start baking one day (I'm not really any type of baking genius), I grew up baking, it's as simple as that. My sister bakes, my mom bakes, my granny bakes and my Ouma (great-grandmother) baked.

I remember baking with Ouma clearly. She used to make a chocolate cake (that I still make today) which she used to decorate with fork swirls and pecan nuts from the garden - every time without fail.

The famous chocolate cake at my birthday

Ouma and her chocolate cake at my sisters birthday

 She also made rusks in a huge enamel bowl. She used to make rusks the proper old fashion way where she would roll each individual rusk and then place them into a pan. I remember stealing little balls of dough to eat while my sister and I helped roll them all out.



What got me thinking about all this is my icing set. It is my Ouma's old Tala set that my mom gave to me when they recently moved away from the farm. It's pretty old, probably at least twice as old as me, so I decided to clean all the nibs as some of them were rusting and some had potentially lethal 50 year old icing stuck on them! Now just to figure out what they all do...

This one looked like it had been used as a chew toy at some point

This nib is SO tiny I have no idea how anything will fit through there

Soaking out the dried up icing

They are obviously pretty old and beaten up, some are bent or have dents in them but they work for me so I'm happy with them. I also know they have the experience of having iced cakes for 50 years so perhaps some of that will rub off on me!