The Maya Kitchen Baking Class with The Burp Society

After our dinner at Van Gogh is Bipolar, we thought it’ll be fun to organize a different kind of activity for the next The Burp Society meet-up. Thankfully, The Maya Kitchen gladly helped us organize a baking class for our group, which turned out to be a completely fun and learning experience for all of us.

Ken’s an excellent pastry chef, which has inspired me to want to learn how to bake. So, I thought it’ll be a great idea to hold a baking class exclusively for The Burp Society. And, almost immediately, I thought about The Maya Kitchen Culinary Arts Center.

I’m sure you’re all familiar with Maya, the brand well-known and trusted for decades by us Filipinos because of the quality of their products. You’ve probably prepared pancakes, brownies, cakes, cookies or even champorado at home with ease because of Maya’s mixes. But, did you know they have been helping out entrepreneurs and home bakers and cooks for years now through the classes they hold at The Maya Kitchen? You can learn more about this through their website: www.themayakitchen.com.

Going back to the baking class, I was expecting about 10-15 people joining. I was surprised when a total of 20 ka-Burps (including me and Ken, and my BFF Jasmin) showed up to learn how to bake. 🙂

Oh, by the way, when we were entering the Liberty building in Makati where The Maya Kitchen is located, we thought it’ll be a run-down place, with old tables and what-not because of how the outside of the building looked like. We were quite surprised to see how gorgeous the whole place was! And they’re well-equipped too, which made us all look forward to our hands-on baking after the demo.

This was an EXCLUSIVE baking class for The Burp Society, so it was just the 20 of us. We initially thought it’ll be a simple baking class, but, boy, were we surprised! It was the most fun I had in months, and we were glad to see everyone was enjoying too. 🙂

We started off meeting Ms. Rory Subida, the Culinary Directress and Manager of the Maya Culinary Arts Center Manila. She’s highly experienced in Culinary Training, and Food and Beverage operations, and she actually got involved in the preparation and publication of more than 25 volumes of Maya Cookbooks.

Ms. Rory imparted a ton of baking tips during the whole class, which I’m sure many of us appreciated. She was also very entertaining. All I can say is I didn’t get bored during the baking class and I was busy quickly scribbling notes during her demo.

When we were planning for this baking class, we were given choices of pastries we’d like to learn how to make. I picked Apple Pie, Moist Chocolate Cake, Chocolate Chip Cookies and Cream Puff/Eclairs.

Since we were pressed for time and it was just a 3-hour class, Ms. Rory decided to include all 4 in the demo, but focus our hands-on baking on the Apple Pie and, instead of a cake, we were to make Chocolate Cupcakes. No complaints here! 😉

One of the very important tip we got was to prep our ingredients – mise en place – before we start baking or cooking. Ken and I know this is how professional kitchens do it because it’s efficient, and you make less mistakes when everything’s ready.

So, the chocolate chip cookies demo started. There was no doubt everyone was anticipating having a taste of what Ms. Rory made, especially when the aroma of the freshly baked cookies wafted through the air.

Well, we got to taste them, of course! The Chocolate Chip Cookies were sweet and salty – exactly how I want them!! Mmmmm 🙂

Next up was the Apple Pie. I was listening intently during this demo because I’ve always wanted to learn how to make them. Ms. Rory and her lovely assistant that day, Ice, made everything look easy.

The demo got me all excited to try my hands on making my own pie crust for the first time. This is why I opted to do the crust (you’ll see below) during our hands-on baking. All the instructions were laid out on the recipe sheets that were given to us, and Ms. Rory demonstrated how to do all the steps properly.

Ms. Rory moved on to showing us how to make moist chocolate cupcakes. Though I know cupcakes are pretty easy to make, I still want to see how they’re done so I can get enough courage to bake them myself without Ken helping me. 😀 After the demo, I knew I can already do it on my own – well, with the recipe sheet right beside me. 😉

During the demos, she gave us a lot of tips, some of which, I listed a couple of paragraphs below.

We also got to taste the cupcakes, but I only found out while we were already baking. 😀 I think I ate 2 cupcakes ’cause they were just so good!

Ms. Rory also quickly showed us how to make choux pastry for cream puffs and eclairs. We were told they’re both made of the same ingredients – the only difference is the shape. She then proceeded to show us how to pipe correctly and out came these shapes for cream puffs (the round ones) and eclairs (long pastries).

We were also given the recipe for the vanilla cream filling (using Maya Cornstarch) that we were supposed to pipe into the cream puffs later during the hands-on baking class.

By the way, the recipes use Maya All Purpose Flour aside from the cornstarch. We use their flour a lot too, but so far, I haven’t seen their cornstarch yet in the grocery.

After the cooking demo, we were all giddy with excitement to start baking and putting what we just learned to use. Ms. Rory grouped us into 4, but she didn’t let us choose who we’d be in the group with. I wanted to be with Ken ’cause I’m competitive and I want to be with someone experienced already. Hahaha – such a cheater, I know. And like there was even a competition.  Well… read on. 😉

 

Cooking Tips from The Maya Kitchen

Here are tips we got from Ms. Rory during the whole baking class:

• The mixture can wait, but the oven can’t. Don’t start mixing til your oven is ready and pre-heated.
• You can freeze your cookie dough so you can store and bake them some other day.
• Oven temperature for cookies: Too low, you’d get drier cookies. If you like moist, go for a high temp so the outer part of the cookie is cooked while inside is slightly unbaked.
• Don’t open the oven door during the first half of baking to check on what you’re preparing.
• How to tell if your eggs are hard-boiled? Spin it. If it spins like a top, it’s hard-boiled. Otherwise, soft-boiled.
• When making cream fillings, always add cornstarch first before sugar. This makes it easier to mix and everything dissolves faster.
• Fuji or Granny (Smith) apples are better for baking.

• Break egg in a separate container / bowl. This way, you can still remove any shell. Also, it’s easier to mix it into what you’re making. I do this whenever I fry eggs. 😀
• Piping mixture into cupcake / muffin cups makes it easier and less messy. I can attest to this and it’s fun to learn how to pipe properly.
• Once you’ve poured all the mixture into your baking pan, carefully bang the pan against the table to lessen bubbles and tunneling – you know, empty slots of air inside the cakes.
• Unmold or remove your cupcakes or cakes from the baking pan right away. Otherwise, they’ll keep on baking/cooking because of the residual heat. This actually applies for other dishes, by the way, like eggs and fried stuff.
• Always follow this pattern when adding ingredients into your mixtures: dry then wet, and you should end with adding the last of your flour. This way, all the wet and dry ingredients are mixed well, especially if you have butter and other liquids.

 

Hands-on Baking Class with The Burp Society

What happened was Ms. Rory asked us to count down to 4. I’m sure you’re all familiar with this. I ended up with Group 4, and Ken with Group 3 with my BFF Jasmin. Though I would’ve loved to be with their group, I quickly realized it’s better this way so everyone can mingle with other people. It turned out to be really fun! 🙂

As you will see, we weren’t really prepared for working in the kitchen, with our flip flops and rubber shoes. 😀

Let me introduce you to the groups. Here’s Group 1. I remember them to be the group who ate all their cream puffs as soon as they piped filling into them. 😀

Group 2 had the most organized table and I love what they did with their pastries. I guess it’s because of Iana, whose photos on Instagram we LURVE!! 😉

Oh, and Jan who’s part of this group was my friend’s batchmate. What a small world! Here’s an obligatory The Reunion photo. 😛

Group 3, as I mentioned earlier, included my BFF Jasmin and Ken. Obviously, they had the best baked goodies, but it’s not just because of Ken. Everyone was really participating and wanted to learn too. 🙂

My group – Group 4 – I think we were the last team to finish everything. 😀 Probably my fault – they didn’t get much help from me ’cause I was busy taking photos of people and what they were all doing, but I did manage to prepare the pie crust. 😛

I think that was my only contribution. 😀 Everyone else did everything: Kat and the youngest home-baker in our group were preparing the cupcakes. Dhora prepared the apples, while Potchi finished up most of what we did.

Though I was busy with my group and chitchatting with people (disturbing them, really), I was glad to see everyone was having a blast.

This is why Ken and I are so happy we thought of starting The Burp Society, and we have a ton of ideas for the group. We just wanted to share our food trips and foodie experiences, and it’s amazing to see how many people are interested in joining us. 🙂

Anyway, going back to our baking class, here are some of the finished products of each group. First, the Overloaded Apple Pie from Group 1. 😛

Not sure what’s on top of Group 2’s apple pie. 😀

Group 3’s – Ken’s group – Apple Pie. I love the stars and moon on top of the pie.

And my group’s pie. Most of our apple pies did end up a li’l watery and we didn’t have much time to taste the pie while we were there, but it was pretty yummy when I tried it at home – yes, we got to take home all our goodies! 😀

The “abstract” plating of Sevie’s cream puffs. 😀

Cupcakes!! YUM!

Ken was pa-bibo and made a different icing – chocolate. Of course, it was to die for! 😀 I actually took home 3 of his cupcakes that I stole from his group. Nyahahahaha 😀 Ok wait, technically, I didn’t steal since he made them. Well, I ate them all. 😛

The rest of the photos will be on The Burp Society’s blog and Facebook page. We’re thinking of holding a Facebook photo contest for the pastries – the group which receives the most votes based on their baked goodies will win – but we haven’t decided on the prizes yet.

Hmmm… maybe we could give away these The Burp Society shirts! 😀 Isabel, Sevie and Potchi were the first recipients because they’ve been to 2 The Burp Society meet-ups already. 🙂 Thank you, ka-Burps!

Overall, our baking class at The Maya Kitchen was a lot of fun and I learned a lot! I can say that I’m now brave enough to bake goodies without relying on Ken, thanks to Ms. Rory and her team at The Maya Kitchen.

Iana brought her kid along with her and I think he also had a lot of fun. He’s the Junior Chef of the group. 😀

Which reminds me that The Maya Kitchen Culinary Arts Center also offers kids baking courses for your Junior Chefs at home! We think it’ll be an exciting experience for your kids. Trust me, I learned how to cook when I was 10 so I’m sure it’ll be memorable and will help with their development too, I believe. 🙂

Also, The Maya Kitchen invites chefs from various restaurants in the Metro as guests and they demonstrate how they prepare some of their best dishes. Exciting, eh?

On their website – www.themayakitchen.com – you’ll find recipes and articles I’m sure you foodies would enjoy. You can check all the courses The Maya Kitchen Culinary Center offers on their website. They have courses for those who are planning to start their own home-baking business. They have culinary and baking classes, by the way, in case you want to learn more than just baking. 🙂

Thank you to The Maya Kitchen, Ms Rory Subida and Tess for helping us out and for the uber fun baking class for The Burp Society. I can’t wait to go back to learn more next time!

The Maya Kitchen Culinary Arts Center

• 8F Liberty Building, 835 A. Arnaiz Avenue (Pasay Road), Makati City
• Contact #: 892-1185 / 892-5011 local 108 / 0947-835-2290
• Website: www.themayakitchen.com
• Email: e-mailcontactus@themayakitchen.com
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Mayakitchen
• Twitter: @MayaKitchen