Brandi's Baking 101

If you think this post is going to tell you about the basics of baking, you're wrong. Ha! Gotcha! Well, kind of :) It's more about the basics of why and how I bake. I am a VERY amature baker and while I'd love to be able to teach you all about baking, I'm still learning myself.

I figured I'd write a more personal post before I start sharing my baking adventures, since many of you were asking me to start a blog to follow them! (Which is super cool, not going to lie.)

I am no scientist or mathematician (both skill sets are heavily involved in baking) so I haven't been able to create any recipes of my own yet. What you'll see here are recipes I've found online and tweaked a little (or a lot.) On my Instagram, you'll see all my baking adventures, and I'll link the recipe owners to the projects I didn't mess with so you can enjoy them as well!

So why do I bake?

It's funny because I've never been big on sweets. I do like them, well, most of them. But I don't usually seek them out. For a long time, I didn't even have many sweets in the house in general. I prefer to drink my sugar (mmm....red wine....)

Growing up, my Nana was the cook in the family. I don't remember her baking much but I do remember helping her prepare Sunday meals for the family in her little kitchen. I remember sitting on the table with her in her chair and helping her stir things, or add ingredients. She died when I was younger, so I wasn't able to retain much of what I had learned as a child with her in the kitchen.

As a preteen and younger adult, I would cook with my mom sometimes, but she wasn't the world's best (though she had a few recipes that she had mastered) and, being the age I was, I cared more about hanging out with my friends and being out of the house. My dad cooked as well, but I really only remember him cooking mac and cheese or spaghetti for us? My parents were divorced so we spent less time with him. I also have a lot of repressed memories of my childhood, so he could've cooked more? But that's a whole other story for another time.

All of that to say I have never really spent much time in the kitchen. At this point in my life, I'm very much like my mom. I'm not a super great cook (lucky for me my husband, Jimmy, is!) but I have a few recipes that I've perfected and I've learned a lot from Jimmy. In retrospect, I'd have to say my love for baking came when I learned how to make cake pops. I found a book in a bookstore and I just thought to myself, "Why not try it?" So I bought the book and began experimenting. The process of making cake pops is SO tedious, but I absolutely loved decorating them. I made some for several occasions: Halloween, Christmas, a friend's wedding and baseball season, to name a few. And I really enjoyed people eating them and liking them (something I wasn't used to being a subpar cook...haha.)

I tried my hand at a cake for my boyfriend at the time.

It's okay. I can laugh at it now, too. I didn't let it cool long enough so the icing started running, but otherwise, I was pretty proud of myself! I don't even remember what the cake flavor was and I'm pretty sure it was a box cake, which is fine! I just wanted to decorate it anyway.

For a while, I would just randomly bake things when I felt like it. I'd make more cake pops, I tried candies and chocolates (unsuccessfully at the time,) chocolate covered cookies, brownies...most of which were not made from scratch. But I still enjoyed making them.

What do my current adventures look like?

Cut to COVID-19, social isolation and a Stay-at-Home order. If you follow me on Pinterest, you see I pin baked goods all the time. I figured since I would be stuck at home, and Jimmy would be home to help care for Dylan, that I would try and make some things that I had my eye on. I'll get into that more later, but during these last several months, I have realized that creating something is a very cathartic experience for me. It also gives me a boost of self confidence when I create something that is actually edible and tasty! Haha. I think the biggest reason I bake is because when I go through the process, my brain shuts off from everything else, and I'm able to focus on something. That's a big deal. My brain is nonstop, even at night. I have trouble sleeping because the minute I wake up, even just a small wake from tossing and turning, my brain starts going 100 miles a minute. I start thinking about tasks for the next day, or how five years ago I said something weird to someone that I don't even talk to anymore and how embarrassing it was. My mind is always racing and spinning, but baking gives me that quiet time. Throughout this time, baking has really become a passion of mine, and I am learning a lot about myself in the process.

What a long winded way to tell you I bake because it makes me feel good!

So currently, I am just following someone else's recipe or putting already created recipes together to make what I want. I hope to be able to make my own recipes one day but for now, this makes me happy and that's all that matters.

If you've decided to follow my progress, I hope you enjoy learning along with me! And if you decide to make anything I post, share your results with me! I'm very interested in hearing your opinion, or learning from you and your changes (if you made any.)

Thanks for being here with me :)