Moving right along to current matters: Baking.
Now that I have an all powerful and fabulously blue kitchen-aid my true status as Baking Maven (or Baven) can be acknowledged at optimum power.
If it is in your power to procure a kitchen aid, I highly recommend it. Don't go accessory shopping right after you get it like Drew and I did, it's highly depre-nsive (ie expensive therefore depressing). There's an ice cream maker attachment for a batrillion dollars. Need I say more? Don't ask me what ice cream is worth to me Retail Gods, you can't put a price on pure joy!
Really, flashy tools aside there are only three things that need to be in the kitchen with you at all times while you bake this holiday season.
They are:
1. Obnoxious music
2. Santa
3. Your 5 year old self
You see, recipes will have you believe that their "recommendations" in the form of "measurements" are holy laws written by the flying spaghetti monster on sacred tablets with raw lightning. This is not true. They are instead written by and edited again by the most uptight people you know. The ones who ask for a "sliver" of cake, break your cookies into bites smaller than the chocolate chips themselves and correct your grammar without smiling.
Are these the people you want to make Holiday treats for? I didn't think so. You want to feed SANTA and his belly that jiggles like a bowl full of jelly.
So, crank up that obnoxious music to encourage deviant behaviour and plant Santa on one side and 5 year old you on the other. These are your trusted advisors.
For example: There is no such thing as a "pinch" of anything, and definitely not cinnamon. COMMIT TO THE CINNAMON. Santa loves cinnamon and 5 year old you likes watching inertia huff avalanche like bombs of cinnamon onto your spoon and into your bowl as you try to measure with the exactness of a NASA scientist.
NASA scientists also like cinnamon.
Sometimes in your haste and enthusiasm to compile the ingredients for your latest venture you may find you have accidentally procured the incorrect ingredient. Fear not.
Today, for example, I bought a pound of shredded carrots for Martha Stewart's "Carrot Cake Cupcake" recipe.
As an aside, Martha Stewart recipes are like the sphinx of baking. You must answer their riddles three and pass all their tests to succeed. They will use words like "unsulfured molasses" making you think to yourself "Wait, there's sulfur in molasses?" and "sage leaves cut chiffonade" with a nice bracketed (optional) next to it to acknowledge with cutting precision what a rank amateur you are at life (if you're me they also lead to adventures at the grocery store, the place that used to be your friend, but since "chiffonade" is a cold, dark place where people think you are insane) These recipes also call for more bowls than most people own, to test your true commitment to the sport of baking. So load up on dollar store bowls and make sure your inner rebel is pumped and primed for the baking olympics when you pick up her books. And imagine how EXTRA satisfying it is to slightly alter Martha Stewart's recipes. You're imaging it aren't you? Excellent.
Back to the shredded carrots.
I got home to realize I had instead bought two bags of "french cut" carrots. I worried this style of cutting was too bulky for the unspeakably tasty delicacies I was preparing to create. I considered trying to slice french cut carrots even finer than they already were one-by-one with a kitchen knife and found this idea filled me with apathy and despair. Then I remembered Drew's magic bullet. I turned to Santa, who now sported sunglasses and was perched on a Harley as he pointed to Drew's magic bullet and proclaimed, "Let's do this."
5 year old me, excited by watching things blended to a pulp, ground her fist into her other hand for encouragement.
So I half pureed, half left them french cut and continued on my epic quest for delicious freedom. (currently finishing up in the oven after making 2 and a half dozen cupcakes and a loaf)
Why should you defy recipes even if it's in the smallest way? Because. Now that you are grown up and you've had the joy of realizing no one really has any idea what they're doing you spend your time divided between clinging to the false comfort of exact rules and having moments where your life is a grand musical and you are getting on the next train to adventure (the next train to adventure might be little more than changing an excel formula at your desk, watching it work and being flooded with a sense of omnipotent power, this is perfectly ok.)
Baking is one of the times you should remember that you have something new to bring to the game and you are unafraid to try. And being a grown up should be about making it up as you go, in the best possible way. With cinnamon. And Santa. And 5 year old you high-fiving your efforts. And the soundtrack the most obnoxious music you've ever liked.
For me it includes defeating Martha Stewart with subtle defiance, but you go ahead and find your special thing.
The End.
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