Tuesday, January 7, 2014

A Baking Story


I started baking about 3 years ago, nothing super fancy, boxed cakes, muffins, and brownies.  You know the stuff you secretly love but you're not supposed to use anymore because the internets is full of tutorials on how to do it from scratch?  That stuff.

Little by little, I started baking more and more from scratch and like the rest of the world, fell in love with cupcakes.  I found baking blogs and started buying cupcake everything.  I started with a whisk, graduated to a hand mixer, and finally after lots of sweat and tears because my buttercream wasn't fluffy enough, I earned my KitchenAid mixer.  In the process of baking cupcakes on a regular basis I acquired a ridiculous amount of stuff: cupcake pans, liners, pastry tips, sprinkles, food coloring, toppers, cupcake books, cupcake kitchen decor, so much cupcake stuff.  I had huge pans, regular pans, mini pans, and then all of a sudden cupcakes were too much.  They were too dainty or too much work or too sweet, basically they just weren't me anymore. So I stopped with the cupcakes and moved on.

I started making simple cakes and cookies, I stopped using all of the extra stuff and fell in love with a few staples.  A few cake pans, baking sheets, a sturdy rubber spatula, and parchment paper.  I'm still learning, I'm not an expert and on occasion I have massive baking fails that make me want to cry, but I feel more at home in my kitchen now.

We finally finished moving into our new place last week and I got rid of all that extra stuff and it was a GLORIOUS feeling.  I'm a huge fan of purging in general but something about purging in the beginning of a new year, in a new place, just felt right.

Lately, I've been stuck on this recipe.  I followed the directions but I used 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and added 1 vanilla bean, because. Vanilla bean.  Biscotti with a cup of coffee and a new book?  I'm in.

Also, my KitchenAid.  She's red and beautiful and her name is Lucinda.

-J


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