WHAT IS IT WITH ME AND BAKING?

Some thoughts on a wintery day that was spent baking - again

A few years ago I discovered a whole part of my father's family from Indiana, Pennsylvania, that I never heard about. Of particular interest here is one cousin, probably two times removed, who was very rich and went on hunting trips, - finding, shooting and presenting to the Smithsonian Museum the largest tiger ever found in India. He also commissioned another relative to write the family history, and that is how I found out that  in the late 1800s one of my relatives turned to opening a baking business when there seemed to be no solution to family financial problems.  Aha, one clue.

Then thinking back to when I was three years old, I tasted a piece of warm cake, and believe me, I never forgot it. Another clue.

Up to fifteen years old there was my great grandmother's baking of bread, pies, some cakes, cookies and something really terrific that was a Cottage Pudding with peaches on the bottom and lemon sauce over the top.  In the neighborhood of Elk River where we all lived, another woman was absolutely famous for her Angel Food Cakes topped with Seven Minute Icing. This young lady took note.

There are a number of stories and good baking adventures between that and now, 2012, but just today as I sat down with one of my favorite cookbooks, "Heavenly Cakes," by my friend, Rose Levy Beranbaum. I thumbed through the pages looking for some specifics for my baking enterprise today, and found all manner of things I have not made yet, and realized with a bit of good glee, that what I would really like doing than anything, is to bake them.

You get to a certain point of life where you set your preferences and live accordingly.  I have a tendency to work on all the things that have been "on my list" for a long time, so what I can do is highly eclectic, but today, all over again, my first love is baking.  I can read a recipe and practically taste it.  I can make up recipes.  I can sail into the kitchen and start hauling out things and pretty soon, golden loaves or cakes are coming out of the oven.

But it is still not the point:   My passion for baking lies in improving what I know, enlarging upon it, inventing with it, and most of all, making something I never made before. That is the jewel in the baking crown of activity for me. I am very happy every morning spending some time sorting out my food files...and of course, there are a lot of unmade cakes there. 

I know some people do not like to make food, but the kitchen is a magnet for me, where I can think clearly, pay attention, invent, and produce some good stuff generally, that will be giving pleasure to a lot of others.