baking.

baking.

Every Tuesday afternoon the kitchen is transformed into a bakery. The cookbooks get pulled from their flour dusted shelves, sticks of butter are taken out of the refrigerator - because we all know butter is essential to good food - and mixing bowls are stacked haphazardly on counter tops and in the sink. After lots of spilled ingredients, messes, and dirty dishes, delicious smells waft throughout the house, enticing certain little children to come running to the kitchen to beg for a bite.

baking2
eggs still in the carton.

Baking is so therapeutic. I mean, you get to take your frustrations out on eggs by beating them, you dismember sticks of butter with a knife, and when you're done mixing everything together, your creation gets to sit in a fiery oven. Ahem. Sorry. My violent side got out there for a minute.

the egg.

But in all seriousness, it's really kind of amazing what simple, basic ingredients like butter, flour, and sugar can be transformed to. I admit I spend good deal of time thinking about how people got the idea to mix such vastly different staples to create a new food. (There's proof right there that I'm a geek.)

muffins3
muffins2

But regardless of how baking originated, I love it. I love the accomplished feeling of knowing that you made that and it's not something off a grocery store shelf. I love the soothing feeling of gently folding together ingredients. I love photographing the finished product. I love the fresh, homemade taste that you just can't get when you buy a treat. And I would love it even more if I had a maid to clean up my baking messes (read: I'm not a neat, tidy baker)...but that's another story. ;)

muffins

Do you like baking? Do you have any tried and true recipes you love? Do tell!

-carlotta