Once a Baker not Always a Baker

When I was a little girl I got an Easy Bake Oven and I was obsessed with it.  It came with tiny pans and tiny mixes and I would make little cakes and brownies and make my family eat them (they were gross) and proclaim I was a little baker.  When I got older and my parents got sick of eating those gooey messes they let me try my hand in the kitchen. I would make muffins, cakes, brownies, cookies, cupcakes, and whatever else you could make from a boxed mix.  I had a lot of fun doing it and I continued to like to bake in to my adulthood. I loved to try new things and would get in to phases where I would study a certain baked good or pastry and make it for months and make people try them (I had a macaron phase for example where I had all these books I would study, and I went to all these bakeries to try them to compare mine to theirs, I had a cream puff stage where I would make them every weekend and tried to perfect them so they tasted like my mom’s, I had a scone phase where I would make a bunch of recipes that had good reviews until I found a recipe I liked).  I also liked eating baked goods of course but most of all I liked gifting them and bringing the baked goods to potlucks and parties for family and friends.

Fast forward to my mom life and I rarely bake.  I cook and I cook often because it’s a necessity and it requires no real measuring (well not the way I cook) and I can throw things together and it’s edible (not the same for baking).  I still loved baked goods and I like to eat and gift them but now I really just buy them. I just can’t spend the time to bake anything too complicated except for the birthday cupcakes for the kids or close family and what I call the “utilitarian baking” which is muffins for breakfast and banana bread when I have lots of ripe bananas.  What I used to make from scratch and spend time researching (cinnamon rolls, biscuits, scones, or even brownies and cookies) I either buy made or use a box or raw dough that I just put on a pan and bake. It’s not elegant and it’s not the quality that I prefer but it’s all I can handle right now. I don’t really enjoy baking anymore because it just takes more time than I am willing to give it and I don’t like the clean up.  It’s funny how life changes and what you used to find so relaxing and fun is just a chore. I have gotten plenty of enjoyment out of buying store-bought cookies and eating them! No shame in that.