Why a blog? Why baking?

Why:

It all started with an Easy Bake Oven…a RED Easy Bake Oven. It also didn’t hurt that I had a mom that was a cake decorator back in the day; needless to say every single birthday cake I ever had was amazing. Those aspects are probably what led to a love of baking at a very young age.

From time to time, my friend and I would try to convince my mom to let us bake and use her leftover royal icing flowers to decorate our cakes. Sometimes we succeeded, but it didn’t always work… We could pretty much handle the baking on our own, but the clean-up was another story.

As I got older and busier with school, sports, and a variety of other extracurricular activities baking got pushed out and somewhat forgotten. It wasn’t until I moved into my first house that I really started spending some quality time in the kitchen. Cooking was more of a necessity, but baking was special and I loved any excuse or reason to bake. Most of those excuses and reasons came in the form of friend get-togethers, parties, BBQs, etc. I may have become slightly obsessed with cupcakes for a time. I still think they are a great dessert; they’re easy to take anywhere because they are individual desserts that you don’t necessarily need a plate and utensils to enjoy. Anyway…

I don’t have cable or satellite TV, just plain old normal local TV. What does this have to do with baking or cooking? Well, after college football season ends, there’s not much on local TV channels during the weekend except for paid programming…unless you switch over to the PBS stations. Most weekends you can find marathons of cooking shows on PBS channels and it became my own, FREE, food channel. I watched them all, Lidia’s Italy, Baking with Julia, Jacques and Julia, America’s Test Kitchen, Mexico One Plate at a Time, Simply Ming, and more. I was fascinated with what I saw and all the things I was learning. It gave me a little more courage to branch out from my cupcakes.

Not only has PBS been a great resource, but all the wonderful and amazing food bloggers out there have been very inspiring. I follow quite a few, you can see some of my favorites listed over on the right. Now I’m finally jumping in to the mix and participating instead of just reading on the sidelines.

Over the last several years my cooking and baking hobby has grown into more of a passion. It’s something that relaxes me when I’m stressed at work, it’s something that I enjoy and it’s something that others can enjoy as well. To take my growing passion to the next level, I decided to start sharing my endeavors on this little blog. I hope you enjoy!