When I was younger, I used to think I could be an excellent baker without practice. It always looked so simple when my mom did it, so why shouldn’t it be simple for me? To mother’s never-ending bemusement, I always burned at least the first dozen cookies (if not the whole batch) and although I managed half-decent cupcakes, they were so much work and took so much time. Decorating was another handicap. I also used to think that I could take things out of baking recipes and add things like I could in cooking. By the time I hit high-school, my false belief of the “ease” of baking was shattered. I went to making brownies and cupcakes from the box and silently declared that I would never live up to my mom’s delicious baking and beautiful cake-decorating prowess.
That was until I moved out of her house. “I have my OWN kitchen! Imagine the things I will bake,” I thought to myself, “This should surely be easier than when I was younger!” My false belief of the ease of baking returned. But this time, I convinced myself, I was going to do it RIGHT. I bought cookbook after cookbook, would glance at the recipes, and think they were easy… I burned plenty of cookies, make decent cupcakes that looked like a four-year-old had slopped some icing on, and went back to brownies from boxes.
More recently though, as I have (clearly) gotten much older and wiser, I have learned that baking really is easy, and this time my belief is not a false one. The trick to baking is a very simple one: Patience and Practice. I wanted to be a perfect baker the first time I tried. I have now burned enough cookies and made enough mediocre cakes and pies and cupcakes to know that patience is the thing I often lacked in my previous attempts.
You learn as you practice another person’s recipe what you can and can’t add or take away from the recipe. You learn as you practice what you like and don’t like. You read a lot of recipes and try a lot of things out, and even when you think you’ve gotten really good at baking, you find some recipes that just don’t work out quite right, but because you’ve had the practice, the next time you try it, you learn what you need to do to change the recipe to make it better or to make it better suit your tastes. And frankly – recipes from friends, family, or the internet are your best bet. Most of my favorite recipes are not from books, but from recipes passed down generations, recipes friends or family adapted to something they liked better (which is usually better than the original recipe anyway), or from personal recipe blogs, written by people like you and me who love to cook and/or bake and want to share simple, easy, and fun recipes without all the WORK. After all, if you’re like me, you want to be a ‘professional’ in your own kitchen, but not an actual professional.
And now I genuinely love baking. I love listening to music while I mix the ingredients, finding a nice groove that I can relax to while still doing something productive. I love the way my house fills with the savory smells that only baking can produce. I love handing something hot and fresh out of the oven to Peter and judging how good my baking will be by his reaction. He always tastes before I do, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love taking the finished product to family, friends, or co-workers for them to enjoy. I love the feeling of making all those treats and only indulging in one (or two if Pete manages to convince me). And my decorating handicap? It’s still there. Just not as prominent as before:
Cheers,
T.
My favorite two recent baking recipes:
Chocolate Coffee Cupcakes with Chocolate Ganache and Buttercream Icing (courtesy of Bakingdom)
Pumpkin Pasties (courtesy of Ezra Pound Cake)
