Women Powering Raiffeisen Tech – Meet Paulina

What does the female power driving Raiffeisen Tech look like? How can you find your place in the technology landscape? What sets us apart and how do we collaborate in an international environment? We invite you to read third interview in the Women Powering Raiffeisen Tech series and meet Paulina Dąbrowska - Backend Developer at Raiffeisen Tech Poland. The interview was conducted by Magdalena Jaros-Szmidt, Communication Expert.

I really enjoy baking. For the last few years I have had other things on my mind, apart from work I've been studying, but whenever I have time I like to disappear into the kitchen. I am also mobilized by special occasions, someone's birthday, name day and, of course, holidays. Where did this interest come from? My mother cooks the best food of the family. So when I wanted to add something from myself, I knew I had no chance with her. Cooking was taken, so I started baking. I enjoyed it so much that the family was convinced for a long time that I would open a bakery. Well I ended up in front of a computer and there is no indication that this is going to change. I really like it!

As a teenager, I looked for recipes on the Internet. I can confidently recommend the website www.mojewypieki.pl, which I started with. I would find a recipe there for a meringue, for example, and run to the kitchen to check that the necessary ingredients were there. Over time, I reached for more ambitious baked goods. Today the showpie­ce is my spinach cake, also called forest moss. I baked it when I bought my first car and decora­ted it with a drawn car. This cake is a hit with our family. It has a beautiful green colour and can be decorated nicely with mascarpone and cream and fresh fruit, such as raspberries or pomegranate. The gingerbread cake was also a successful bake.

Admittedly, I made it once because it was a lot of work. It was simply a massacre! You have to bake three layers of gingerbread sponge cake, each se­parately. I topped it with plum jam and cinnamon cream and covered it with coconut shavings, so it looked like it was dusted with snow. Beautiful!

As time went on, I felt so confident that I started experimenting, such as cutting down on sugar. I also switched to more healthy ingredients. A cake doesn't necessarily always have to be cho­colate or with cream. I try to make vegan cakes. Our hit in the family is cashew cheesecake. It's a bit of a snap, but tasty.

What has gone wrong for me in the kitchen? I definitely had some sort of crisis. I remember the problem was the cream wouldn't whip. And if the cream doesn't whip, the cream is to be thrown away because it's too runny and it pours. I experi­mented the most with the carrot cake, my favorite. Once I gave a little less sugar, other times more grated carrots. Everything by eye. Once, unfortu­nately, I poured in too much baking soda, which is essential for the cake to rise. After baking, it looked beautiful, but tasted like... soap.

When I travel, I always try local sweets. Recently I was in Vietnam, where my boyfriend and I bo­ught some strange sweets in the market that had a ‘difficult’ taste. Of Asian sweets I like mochi, the rest are debatable. Fortunately, we have a lot of great cakes in Europe. My favourite is the Portuguese pastel de nata, which is a puff pastry tart with pudding. I even thought about baking tarts at home, but I was intimidated by the prepa­ration of the puff pastry. So much work to do with it, rolling it out, I decided against it. But I have ambitions. I would also like to make croissants, which my boyfriend really likes. Here again, puff pastry is the basis, so I don't think I'll get away from it. The vision of a flat smelling of croissants baking is very tempting.