A Time to Bake

I can't remember when I learned how to bake. My mom has stacks of pictures of me cracking eggs while wearing diapers, rolling my hands through flour with a pacifier in my mouth, and spreading icing with a blankie nearby. My first cook book was Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Cookbook and my favorite recipe within was Big Bad Wolfe's Brownies. I made the brownies as often as my mother allowed and it took several tries until they were perfect. The first batch burnt, the second batch overflowed, and the third was edible. I poured over the book, dogearing pages anxious to cook as much as possible. As children we all baked and the busiest time in the kitchen was Christmas. Together we rolled out sugar cookies and gingerbread, learned how to use cake decorating equipment, used plastic molds to make holiday mints and poured bags of marshmallows into chocolate to make stained glass window cookies. In elementary school I lived for the holidays, but as I grew into a very cool teenager decorating endless stacks of sugar cookies was a chore I was too cool to do.

My love for the sugar, flour, butter, combo was rekindled during the my senior year of college. Living in an apartment with my dearest friends, we often invited others over for dinner on the weekends. I wooed my now husband with chocolate cakes, apple turnovers, rustic french bread, and of course, cookies. If people were coming over there was a baked good to eat. Before Christmas break that year, I invited a couple of girls over to make sugar cookies and gingerbread. I boldly made a double batch of each dough and together we cut them all out and decorated. Every open space in the apartment was covered in frosted figures and our hands bore food coloring stains. We decorated for hours and later held a cookie eating party as our apartment filled with people who devoured our creations (Andrew was in attendance).

Learning how to bake is a work in progress. My first pie, for sale by auction at my school's pie day, was pathetic and was given away at the end of the day. I've burned sweet rolls after spending hours on the dough and have made flourless chocolate cakes fall. With the aide of the King Arthur's Cookie Companion, Baking Illustrated and a kitchen scale, lately I've had better luck in the kitchen. My pies have turned out better thanks to a tutorial by my mother-in-law.

All of the extra time on my hands this week, has turned my kitchen into a baking factory. Gingerbread, Mexican wedding, peanut butter balls and chocolate chip were all on the menu to take to New York for Christmas and I gladly covered my counters once again. Today I have a snow day and am aching to start up my mixer. Peanut brittle, white chocolate macadamia nut biscotti and more chocolate chip are on the menu. My face will soon be dotted with flour, Christmas music will stream in the background and Andrew will once again enjoy a cookie or two.