Let me tell you about the best $95 you’ll ever spend by introducing you to Momofuku Milk Bar baking classes. I don’t like to bake or cook, but I do love to eat sweets. I’ve taken a number of classes before in the hopes of getting better in the kitchen, but I find them to be tedious. Not so with this one. First off they give you cake, chocolate, cream fillings, (and booze…) to snack on and more importantly, it’s extremely well organized. The instructor walks everyone through the process of making a cake and truffles (which are actually cake balls made from the scraps of your cake) step-by-step. Most classes I’ve taken, you are off on your own while the instructor walks around…I can do that at home! Better yet the bulk of the prep work is done for you – i.e. the soaks, moist cake, the crumbles, etc. are all pre-made (the recipes are available but it would take way too long to make all the components from scratch – just building the cake and the truffles took two hours!).
Everyone works on their own and gets to take home the cake they make and bags of truffles (about 15 truffles in total). Given that a 3-pack of truffles is almost $5 and a cake is about $40 you almost break even taking the class and I love that you can control how much of each layer you want (for example I love the chocolate/coffee crumble but not so much the passion fruit cream so I can adjust accordingly). They offer a number of classes so you can pick your favorite cake. While the class certainly convinced me to never attempt making one of Milk Bar’s cakes on my own (again I don’t like to bake and this is a very time-consuming cake to attempt on your own!), I will be making my own truffles out of cake that has become too dry to eat. Basically all you do is crumble up any old cake, add a soak so it becomes a moist dough and then cover it in white chocolate (dark/milk chocolate are too over-powering) and then dunk them in cake batter mix!
On a side note, the Milk Bar cakes taste AMAZING frozen and it’s a great way to keep them fresh longer (not that they last more than two or three days anyway before they are completely eaten…). The cake doesn’t really freeze, it just gets very chilled so you can stick it in, cut a nice slice, and eat it right away…so, so good!
Actually, I made one of Momofuku Milk Bar’s cakes — from scratch — for my birthday in July. While I will grant you that there’s a learning curve, the cakes are NOT DIFFICULT to do. You just have to be organized and read all of the instructions thoroughly before you start. You cannot bake one of these on the spur of the moment (that’s what Duncan Hines is for — I guess — I don’t use that stuff), and you will probably need to go shopping for some of the materials called for. But these cakes are not beyond the reach of any decent home baker and they really are a miracle to behold. Delicious, too. I love chef Christina Tosi,and heaven knows I’m not against a girl making a buck, but I don’t see the value of a $95 “learning experience” in which everything is already done for you. Just sayin’ …