Sweet Beginnings

Maybe it’s the sort of rebellious triumph of licking the beaters with impunity. Or it could be powdered-sugar-dust-cloud delirium. (Do you count calories that you breathe?) Or maybe it's the glee of playing not just with my food but actually in it, up to my elbows in butter and chocolate. Whatever it is, there’s something that makes baking--for me, anyway--crazy addictive.

What's not to love, right? Cookies, cakes, pastries—they're fun to make, fun to eat, and fun to give to other people. There’s just a whimsy to it, a creativity, and I’ve known it since I was a kid, when my baking adventures were limited to licking Mom's beaters (as in the photo to the right) and experimenting with the Play-Doh dessert factory and Easy Bake oven (ah, the joy of cooking with a light bulb). Somewhere around junior high I graduated to the real thing. My grandmother gave me my first tube pan and sifter, and I started churning out nutmeg sugar cookies like mad. Good times.

To skip over about a decade of muffin, cake, and cookie stories, the summary is that this is a hobby that's become more of an obsession over the years. And now I'm trying to edge my way into the world of "doing this as a job" instead of just "pawning off food on anyone who will take it." (In other words, I need to start making some money off doing what I love, since it's pretty much either that or go broke from all the baking expenses.) I've been working as an editor/writer for the last few years but am planning to enter a pastry arts program at a local community college this fall. And I'm working on picking up some baking "gigs" here and there even now.

What's surprising is that, until recently, it never entered my mind to blog about this. I say “surprisingly” because writing is another love of mine. My degree is in print media, and I’ve been working as an editor/writer since I was in college. Writing love + baking love= I can soliloquize about flour and eggs indefinitely and with a good amount of zeal. But, really, who would read that (other than my mom)? Ah, silly, silly, naïve me.

It was about a year ago that I typed something like “green tea cupcake recipe” into Google. I clicked a random link and—voila!—pictures of cupcakes, recipes, links, personal anecdotes, etc., flooded the screen. Um…wow? I had unintentionally stumbled into the wonderful world of the food blog—the baking blog. For me, this was like waking up at a combination Disneyland/Candyland. Magic!

Anyway, I’ve been reading these things voraciously for months now, getting ideas, learning techniques, trying recipes, admiring photos, and generally just reveling in baking intoxication (and feeling really justified in it, since other people apparently do the same thing). Now I’ve finally decided to join the ranks and start logging my own baking adventures. Thus this site.

The idea is that this will be some form of inspiration for me, plus a chronicle of sorts. The site is sadly underpopulated right now, obviously. I don’t have a fancy-pants camera and thus won’t be posting high-res, magazine-quality food pictures. The writing will be off-the-cuff and probably rambling. No doubt I’ll be horrible about updating, if my past blogging experience is any indication. And maybe it will only be my mom who reads is (love ya, Mom!).
But, in any event…here it is. Hello, world of baking blogging.