Work-life balance CPA bakers Lorraine Cheung with her mixed berry cookies 38 December 2015
aplus Turning up the heat Nothing evokes the anticipation of Christmas like the smell of fresh cakes and cookies baking in the oven. Tigger Chaturabul talks to Institute members well-versed in the art of baking about how they whip up individual ingredients into tasty masterpieces Photography by Anthony Tung W hen Lorraine Cheung looks through the window of her oven, she is mesmerized by what goes on inside. It s really amazing to see the ingredients you mixed together turn into something edible, like how flour can become bread, says the Business Tax Advisory Partner at EY and a member of the Hong Kong Institute of CPAs. She admits that from an economic perspective, baking is not cost efficient, but to her, it s more than just another cooking process. Baking is how Cheung achieves some peace of mind. The art of baking is to slow yourself down and really enjoy the process, she says. When I bake, I focus on the flour, the milk, the eggs, and I don t trouble myself with anything else. CPAs like Cheung make time out of their busy schedules to devote themselves to kitchen creativity, finding ways to get around the challenges of baking in Hong Kong. With the abundance of bakeries available in a five kilometre radius, it can be difficult to justify the time and effort it takes to bake cookies or a loaf of bread. Regardless, some Institute members present a deep level of dedication, innovation and quick thinking in order to give rise to perfectly baked treats. Cheung s key tip for getting the best results is to be friends with your oven. You really have to understand it well, she says. Results can vary between different equipment brands so 100 degrees on my oven might not be the same as on another. Cheung started baking with a small toaster oven, which proved insufficient as her passion grew. When you start baking, you just can t stop so I changed to a bigger oven. I m actually changing my oven again to an upgraded one with a slow cooking function because I want to try exploring this new cooking trend, she says. When I bake, I focus on the flour, the milk, the eggs, and I don t trouble myself with anything else. While Cheung enjoys baking bread and cookies, her specialty is party food. Whether it s nachos, roast beef, cheese sticks or more, Cheung always has a list of children-friendly foods she can prepare when her sons, Jeremy and Jaden Lo, invite friends home. Now that [Jeremy] is in kindergarten, he has a lot of friends and always asks when we can have parties so they can come over, she says. Party food is simple but it s fun and the kids always like it. For a busy CPA mum, baking is the perfect tool for whipping up snacks and meals. It s very convenient because after you prepare the food, you set the temperature and time, pop it into the oven and do other things while you wait for the ding, whereas if you were to use a Chinese wok, you d have to monitor the entire cooking process, says Cheung. She also puts thought into the nutrition that goes into her creations. When I bake for my kids, I go to Citysuper to buy organic ingredients, she says. It s actually not difficult to find baking materials in Hong Kong and they re not expensive either. Two years ago, Cheung called on her baking skills to help Jeremy, who was at the time an underweight three-year-old. I made a lot of crème brûlées because the milk, cream and eggs would help him gain weight and of course he loved the sweet dessert with its smooth texture, she explains. Cheung also volunteered in one of her firm s corporate social December 2015 39
Work-life balance CPA bakers responsibility programmes organized by EY s Social and Recreation Club and the Working Parent s Network in partnership with the Tin Tze Small Group Home for Children to host a Christmas Giving party for 30 children. I baked cookies for the event and it was very meaningful for us to share this time with kids without the presence of parents. Mixed methods For Frederick Li, baking is about teamwork. The Senior Associate at Grant Thornton and a prospective Institute member gathers with his friends and colleagues to explore new recipes together when they re not travelling on business. I got into baking three years ago with a coupon for a baking class, says Li. My colleagues and I wanted to gain some experience in baking cakes so we joined the class with an instructor and learned how to make chocolate cupcakes. Nowadays, Li goes to a friend s home every two or three months for a baking session. It s not easy to find a place where we can bake because kitchens in Hong Kong are usually quite small, he says. Their busy lifestyles also limit the opportunities they have to put on their aprons. By going out to cafes and trying different desserts, he and his friends get inspired to reproduce these recipes. The baking classes are a good resource for us because even if we don t take the class, most studios have ingredients or tools available for sale and that s where we get most of our things from, says Li. The staff there are also more knowledgeable and can give us advice when we try a new recipe for the first time. Li s favourite step in the process is mixing all the ingredients together. For him, this delicate action is when everything starts to transform into the desired consistency. To really mix something well, you need to have both patience and concentration, he shares. Even if you start feeling tired, you can t allow your mind to wander because your mixing technique will affect the end result. He cites a previous mousse cake baking session as an example. I was chatting to my friends as I was stirring the mixture and absentmindedly added too much water, he laughs. I had to do it all over from the beginning. To really mix something well, you need to have both patience and concentration. One of Li s favourite recipes is for tiramisu, a more complicated process that requires less common ingredients. Even though I don t usually make very special desserts, it s nice to share what I ve made among my friends and take some for my family, he says. The comments I get are usually pretty good. His next endeavour is to try a recipe for a green tea cake, a flavour he is particularly partial to but hasn t had the opportunity to bake with. Italian cuisine is also under Li s repertoire of kitchen talent. Although he has experimented with different ingredients to make a variety of spaghetti sauces, he still much prefers exploration through baking. Baking is newer for me and the teamwork that goes into it is the most amazing element, he says. Every time we try something new, we never know what the taste will be but it s the process of making it together that I really enjoy. The midnight baker It takes dedication to join a 14-day bread baking workshop in Japan, taking one to two classes per day to learn the basics of bread. This is what Anntice Lai, Technical and Regulatory Director at Baker Tilly and Institute member, did. She has been baking since secondary school and hasn t stopped learning about the craft since. Lai first learned to bake in Form one through her home economics class before receiving her first oven from her parents as a birthday gift. At the beginning, I got inspiration from cookbooks about what to bake but nowadays I rely more on the Internet for tips and advice, which allows me to create my own recipes, she shares. Despite starting out with baking cakes and cookies, her family s preference 40 December 2015
aplus Frederick Li mixing ingredients together December 2015 41
Work-life balance CPA bakers Anntice Lai with her fresh bread rolls 42 December 2015
aplus I can actually save a lot of time on buying birthday or Christmas gifts because I bake something for people instead. for less sweet things resulted in her enrolling in the workshop in Japan. I had to rethink what I could make for breakfast. After the short-term course, I brought back a full set of tools and knowledge about how to bake basic bread, French bread and Japanese bread, she explains. Bread-making is difficult to learn at first but after you get the basics, it becomes more simple. Lai makes fresh rolls with sausage, ham, cheese or tuna for her family once a week, switching up the options and adding healthy ingredients like yogurt. Lai calls herself a midnight baker because her busy CPA lifestyle only allows her to bake late in the evening or on the weekends. When I really concentrate on baking, I can release most of the work pressure, she says. Baking is a good opportunity to share food and ideas between friends. Because Lai s family isn t afflicted with a sweet tooth, Lai tends to share her baked goods with friends or colleagues. I can actually save a lot of time on buying birthday or Christmas gifts because I bake something for people instead, she says. Whenever Lai pays a visit to Japan, she comes back with new cookie cutters. I love baking cookies because there are so many compositions and forms and my signature is almond cookies, similar to the ones you can buy from Jenny Bakery (a series of shops popular among tourists for its homemade butter cookies), she shares. I have cookie cutter shapes from Batman to the gingerbread man, from bears to bunnies and more. People really like the cat shapes too. As a CPA, Lai has an innate attention to detail that comes in handy when she mixes ingredients. Little changes can make a big impact, she notes. I use bread flour to make cookies and that s what gives them their crispy structure. Quick thinking can also come into play when things don t go according to plan. Lai remembers laying out the ingredients to bake a cheesecake, only to discover that the cream cheese went bad. I already began the process and cream cheese wasn t available around my area, she says. I thought, cream cheese is similar to yogurt, so I went down to grab some, added almond powder to thicken the consistency, and ended up with a totally new kind of cake. The taste was exceptionally delicious, she recalls. December 2015 43