My first attempt at baking.
Last night I started on a beautiful journey into my newest hobby. Baking!
I've enjoyed baking treats in the past, usually for family members around holiday times and that was it. I never really thought of making it a thing or a hobby. Up until now I wouldn't really consider myself to have any "hobbies" besides re-watching my favorite Netflix series or movies.
Everything I do in my life has a bigger purpose. I train for my career as a professional athlete, I coach for my job, I am an entrepreneur and that carries with it so many tasks that I don't even want to list them all right now. I've only had one cup of coffee over here lol. I simply don't have the energy yet. My point being, I do so many things that have a purpose, and not so many things for the pure joy and love of just DOING IT. In my opinion that is what a hobby should be. Doing something because it brings you joy, energy, life, and fulfillment. AKA you are not doing it for any sort of gain other than making yourself happier.
Baking/cooking does this for me. I will leaving cooking out of this for now, but I do also love to cook!
Anyways, back to my baking attempt last night. Its Friday night and I am EXHAUSTED beyond all reason. I train all week (2 a days) and my husband and I are just wanted to settle in for the evening to enjoy our short weekend together. He is being shipped out on a training mission before the weekend is up, so our time is precious lol. Remember how I said a hobby should give you life and energy? Well it did just that. When I should have be relaxing on the couch at 7pm last night, I was up and writing up a grocery list for my first attempt at home made muffins. I was very excited! And off to the store we went to procure our ingredients. Yes my wonderful husband indulged me by coming along for the journey to the grocery store.
All the ingredients were carefully chosen, bought, and brought back home.
There are 3 big things I learned right off the bat in my baking adventures.
I do NOT like reading a recipe from my phone! For some reason this does not compute with my brain and I struggle HARD keeping my tasks focused and in order. I would much prefer working from a recipe book or anything on paper. No electronics allowed here!
I am going to eventually have to invest in a proper stand mixer. For those of you who don't know, a stand mixer is a staple tool for most baking and it costs a FUCK-LOAD of money. Like way more money then you would expect a kitchen appliance to cost.
Most recipes call for at-room-temperature ingredients. So those ingredients you just picked up fresh from the grocery store? Yeah, those need a few hours to sit out to because room temperature now.
My first obstacle was the room temperature ingredients. Its now about 8-8:30pm and I am ready to bake, but my ingredients said "no way ma'am" you need to wait a few more hours. Fuck that noise lol. Now what I am about to tell you may shock you, but rest assured, my husband is most likely the only one who will be eating these first attempted muffins. Maybe his Marine buddies, but they are Marines, they dont care. My husband taught me a wonderful trick he learned in the field when he wants to warm up some sauce packets that come in his MRE's. You simply stick them up under your (his) balls-like area and let it warm up. I know! I know! Super weird and gross, but I wanted to start baking and desperate times you know? He took on the roll of mother hen and warmup up the eggs for me, while I warmed up the stick of butter. Now since the milk is liquid and I wasn't about to start pouring that down my pants, I just warmed it slowly in the microwave a couple seconds at a time. We were finally good to go.
The recipe called to start mixing the drying ingredients first, or so I thought. The draw back of this being on my phone and having to scroll to see different things at once. UGH! Well the FIRST step I took was adding my sugar into my flour. Mixed it up, back to my phone for step two, and step two was to add the sugar to the butter. Fuck! I've already messed this up. How did I already mess this up? I blame my phone lol. I did not feel right throwing it out, so I went forward with an extremely sweetened flour mixture and measured out some more sugar to add to my butter.
After a few cursing attempts, and continued yelling at my phone for not showing me the recipe in the proper fashion my husband chimed in. "Babe, why don't you just print out the recipe?" Well, fuck me. Thats probably the smartest thing I've ever heard. Maybe this is why we keep the men-folk around.
With my freshly printed recipe on the counter-top it was smooth sailing from there. All ingredients are mixed, and ready to pour into my muffin pan (lined with paper cups of course). I decided to make these muffins with mini chocolate chips. Since I am not enjoying them and my husband is, he got to decide what went inside. Mini chocolate chips. Well I decided on the "mini" part because they are adorable. In the oven they go.
The results were great! I don't know if the added sugar did anything bad or good to the muffins, but my husband seemed to throughly enjoy them. He spent the rest of the evening on the couch, snacking on muffins, and watching a movie. I mean can you say Friday-Night-Bliss?
I am going to deem my first attempt at baking as a SUCCESS! There will be many more baking stories to come I am sure. Thank you so much for coming along into my home and sharing this baking adventure with me. I hope it inspires you to go out and find a hobby that brings your life LOVE AND FULFILLMENT.