The Community Service Committee of UTAR Centre for Foundation Studies (CFS) of Kampar Campus organised a free webinar titled "Baking for Beginners with The Chemist Baker" on 31 July 2022 from 10am to 12pm via Zoom.

Aimed at exposing participants to basic baking skills and tools, the webinar was open to all. It also attracted a total of 182 participants who were UTAR staff, UTAR students and the general public.

The speaker, Sree Amertharaj, a Chemistry lecturer at UTAR CFS, is a self-taught, passionate home baker since 2016. His signature sweet and savoury treats are Lemon Poppy Seed Cake, Devil's Food Cake and the all-time-crowd-favourite, Dark Chocolate Brownies.

In his talk, Sree covered all the three crucial stages of the baking process which were mixing, baking and cooling. He ascertained that bakers must have passion and be patient while baking because contrary to most people’s beliefs, baking is certainly a complex and tedious process. He also explained the chemistry behind baking which involves the Maillard Reaction (a chemical reaction between amino acids and reducing sugars) as well as the chemical reactions produced by baking soda and baking powder.

Sree also explained the baking essentials (tools) that every home baker should possess such as measuring cups and spoons, spatula and scrapper, wooden spoon, whisk, wire rack, pastry brush, kitchen scale, and so on. The participants were also enlightened about the common baking ingredients that should be known by every baker which include all-purpose and self-raising flours, castor and icing sugars, baking powder, baking soda, and other essentials.   

The speaker also touched on the do’s and don’ts of baking followed by a run-through of some common mistakes made during baking. Using the wrong oven temperature and opening the oven too frequently while baking are some of the common mistakes among others, that some bakers commit. Towards the end of the webinar, Sree played a video demonstration on how to bake and decorate vanilla cupcakes using various piping techniques before sharing some pictures of the end products that he has baked before.

The webinar was certainly an eye-opening session for all the participants and this was evident in the feedback received by the committee. The participants expressed their gratitude to Sree for an informative sharing session and hoped to participate in future webinars of such genre.