I spent the last bit of December baking cookies, and now I can’t stop baking completely. In two weeks, I’ve made gingerbread cookies, shortbread, lengua de gato, chocolate crinkles, spiced chocolate cookies, banana chocolate muffins, banana oat muffins, miso apple crumble, and apple cake. I’ve always talked about not being much of a baker, but I’ve found it quite comforting in this dire weather.
It all started with the gingerbread cookies. I used the Big Soft Ginger Cookies recipe from Allrecipes.com and substituted granulated sugar with turbinado to coat the dough before baking. This added an extra crunch to the cookies, and I thought they looked better than they would with just granulated sugar. I only intended to bake gingerbread cookies, but I started craving shortbread after seeing so many people baking them. And although I’m a fan of Walker’s Shortbread, it felt too easy not to make them yourself.
I used the 3-Ingredient Butter Cookies recipe from The Cooking Foodie on YouTube, but instead of just using three ingredients, I added vanilla extract, a pinch of salt, and used turbinado sugar to coat the edges of the dough before baking. I also used salted butter, which felt pretty naughty, but I am a rogue baker after all.
I used the Lengua de Gato recipe from The Unlikely Baker, which I didn’t alter. The recipe was great, and my mom loved it. I forgot how much I loved eating these cookies growing up. They’re thin, crispy, extremely buttery, and just sweet enough to make you want more.
I won’t share where I got the chocolate crinkles recipe because they were quite disappointing. It was extremely dry and just didn’t work! Hate is a strong word, but I really did hate it. Still, I didn’t want to give up on chocolate, so I decided to make spiced chocolate cookies, which I made up on the go and somehow worked. I added a few cracks of red pepper flakes and ground cloves on top, but I don’t remember the rest of the ingredients or process. I should’ve written it down, but oh well. Maybe I’ll develop a recipe for that at some point.
Now, for the other baked goods. I made my tried and true Miso Apple Crumble recipe, which has become one of my favourite recipes at this point. I love how it smells, and the miso really takes it up a notch. I freestyled the apple cake and used vegetable oil for the batter. Unfortunately, this was also an experiment that I failed to document. It turned out more like a snacking cake than a dessert, which was fine, but I wanted it to be more like a dessert cake.
As for the muffins, I used the Banana-Chocolate Chip Muffins recipe from Epicurious and the Banana Oat Muffins recipe from Allrecipes.com. I’ve realized I’m not a chocolate chip-in-a-muffin kind of girl, but I love a breakfast muffin, and the Allrecipes.com recipe was exactly what I wanted. You can feel the texture of the oats, but it was just as moist and fluffy as any other muffin.
I’ve enjoyed baking more than cooking as of late. It feels weird to admit that because I used to despise it so much. I hated the mess, the endless dirty dishes, and the amount of eggs I had to use each time — it’s all too much! But holiday baking has been so enjoyable that I think I’m going to embrace being a baker this year. The smell makes the whole house like a cozy bakery, and that alone makes the mess worth it. I’ve also been lacking the energy to develop new recipes, mainly because I’ve spent the past year working on my cookbook, but baking has reignited the joy of being in the kitchen again. I feel like a kid discovering something amazing for the first time. It’s the best feeling.
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