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[habiliments]

Baking, I sometimes forget, makes me happy. For the last three hours, give or take time to drink a margarita, eat some bread and cheese and debate groups and belonging to them, I've been measuring cocoa powder and blending softened butter and staring - I admit, a little crankily - at my 9" cake pans when I realized they were not, in fact, 2" deep.

Comments

[habiliments]

I used to feel the same way about cooking! I learned to bake when I was a kid - Grandma seemed to apply that "Give a man a fish/teach a man to fish" saying to her only granddaughter and cookies; teach the kid to bake, and she'll make the damn things every time she comes over. ;) So when I started trying to cook - in my late 20s! - it was hard to adjust. I've finally gotten to the point where I can make a soup or pasta without a recipe, or fuck with a boring recipe to make it better, but I'm still a better baker. I kind of like following directions. It's like chemistry or something.

I hope to get my shit together enough to post about Tom Lenk, one place or another. ;)

[gritsnyc]

I am like this about cooking. The chopping and prep and stuff is very meditative for me. Which is why I should do it more often.

Not a big baker, though I make a good cookie. I think I'm with darkmuse_ic -- it's too much chemistry and precision while I'm a freewheeling experimenter with a sense of the general rules. Of course.

I don't know that I've ever sampled your baked goods? Something that should be rectified!

[habiliments]

The prep parts of cooking are my favorite parts. I sometimes pick recipes entirely because they involve lots of thin slicing and mincing. (Often this involves soup, which J. thinks he doesn't like. I've been tricking him into coming around.)

It's crazy that I've never made baked goods when you're around! I didn't bake a lot in NYC, as, as you may remember, my apartment had about two feet, tops, of counter space, and this one time when we used the over, it refused to turn off. Er. But yes. I've never mastered chocolate chip cookies, but I can make a deadly delicious Black Pearl Cake. ;)

Someday, we'll share duties on a dinner party. Deal? ;)

[habiliments]

OVEN, not over. Um, I might be tired. I still haven't packed for the weekend and I have to finish the frosting in the morning!

[storme]

Hmm, yeah. Sometimes I just want to chop lots of vegetables into small, neat chunks or slices; usually my SO seems sort of seems bemused that I wouldn't just want to chop faster/more efficiently.

I do usually draw the line at mincing garlic by hand, though. Garlic crushers FTW!

[gritsnyc]

Tee hee! YES, it's a deal.

And here's the secret to chocolate chip cookies: Use the Toll House recipe, but melt about 3/4 of the butter. Bake only one sheet at a time and don't overbake. That's about it (and that's why it's the one thing I can bake!).

[habiliments]

Deal! And I'm going to save this and try it next time I make chocolate chippers! I hate when they get all dry and crunchy. Soft is the way to go. :)