Baking

I can, now, at the age of 36, say that I am a pretty good cook.  Not a gourmet cook, or anything, but 95% of the time that I make something, even if I wing it, it turns out to taste really good.  Baking, however, has always been another thing entirely.  Brownies have been my fallback for a long time, because apparently they are almost impossible to screw up and it's amazing how good chocolate frosting (something that doesn't take an oven) can cover a multitude of culinary sins.

Part of it is that I've never really enjoyed baking, especially cookies.   The pressure of getting something cooked perfectly even once is hard enough, but pan after pan of the things - no thanks.  It doesn't help that my grandmother is the queen of homemade bread and my mother the undisputed and quite famous queen of chocolate chip cookies.  They have both assured me that their expertise comes from years of practice, but I also think they have a knack for it.  There's also the fact that baking is largely about proportions a.k.a. math and about chemistry - bleck.

However, in the last few weeks, thanks to our abundance of produce, I've decided to get brave and try making some baked fruit desserts.  Last week I made a cobbler and this week apple pear crisp.   The cobbler was ridiculously easy, the apple crisp a little less so (I'm not a big fan of peeling either) but both came out yummy.  Now, they won't win prizes or anything, and they won't touch my mom's cookies in the "favorite dessert" contest anytime soon, but they both tasted really good and were fun to eat.   So maybe baking isn't so evil, especially if I lower my expectations --- and stay away from trying to bake cookies.