Bakers, start your ovens

The first rule of Bake Club is to talk about Bake Club. Christoph Vogel meets a kitchen wiz who's taking her baking to the world.
We probably all do it. Some of us more often, some just every once in a while. But every time, when the pleasing, delightful smellfrom the oven goes up your nose, there's always the same warm feeling.
Baking may be underrated and seen as a challenge or too time-consuming. Not to forget too complicated. If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Though, everyone enjoys eating it. Behind each nice piece of baking there's a recipe. Auckland is full of hobby bakers, but just a few of the recipes leave their own house. Frances Mei-Ping Chan, a Westmere resident, shares the passion for baking with many others. So she does on an internet blog of her Bake Club.
"I started the Bake Club website for my friends who like baking, but it's for the benefit of all enthusiastic home bakers out there who are keen to share their recipes and want to be inspired by other bakers," Ms Chan says.
The love for cooking and baking started in her youth, as she calls her mother the "most natural baker in the world". Ms Chan wanted to archive her mother's recipes so friends and families could also access them. They all got together, brought home baking - and the Bake Club was born.
Ms Chan had already created a personal website for herself, so to get the Bake Club blog running was not that much of a problem. A cake monster logo was created by a friend. Every contributor of a recipe gets a button badge showing the blue, smiley monster.
"Friends and I meet once in a while to sample each other's cooking but scrolling through Bake Club is a great way to get ideas when we don't have time to meet," she says.
The blog started in August 2010 and the Bake Club's recipes got comments from professional as well as amateur bakers from other blogs. Each entry comes along with a photo of the final creation to whet the appetite.
Anyone can contribute a recipe to the blog, sweet or savoury. Ms Chan admits she'd like to encourage young kids to bake and to submit their pics. For Ms Chan, baking is something special and more than just a hobby.
"Baking is the perfect way to appease my sweet tooth, and being in the kitchen relaxes me. I like to try new recipes and also adapt to what's in my pantry."
Another aspect is the tease of self- and homemade products. You know what's in it and that it'll - depending on how long you leave the tin in the oven - taste delicious.
"I like the fact that ordinary people with a passion can share that enthusiasm on the world wide web with a like-minded audience. With baking, the scope for finding recipes and cooking tips is endless," she says.
And the proof of her blog's success, of course, will be in the eating.
"I'd be so happy if someone randomly found my website, tried a recipe from Bake Club and like it."
Frances's lime shortbread with feijoa zest
100 g butter
2/3 cup icing sugar
2/3 cup cornflour
2/3 cup flour (I used a gluten-free mix)
3 Tbs feijoa zest
1 Tbs lime zest
3 Tbs lime juice
Heat oven to 150 C. Cream butter and sugar until pale. Mix in flour, juice and zest. Add little more zest or juice to taste - should be tangy. Knead to a dough. Wrap in plastic wrap and put in fridge for 15 mins. Roll dough out to about 1/2 cm thickness. Use a cookie cutter to make shapes. Place on lined oven tray a couple of cm apart to allow for spreading. Bake for 20-25 mins or until cooked through. You can also just press the dough into a slice tin, and cut into rectangles and prick with a fork before baking. Shortbread is easy to experiment with - you can use any kind of citrus, add spices, nuts, whatever you have handy in your pantry.
Click and bake
Visit the Bake Club's blog on http://bakeclub.yolasite.com
If you want to contribute your own work, email a pic and the recipe to
go.bakeclub@gmail.com