When cooks try to bake

Some of us are blessed to be considered good cooks AND bakers.

This week, I realized I cannot bake for my life. I used to bake pretty frequently when I first started college. Food was an outlet that I found out was a great stress reliever. Whether it was exam grades, looming deadlines, or just the blues, cooking and baking was this time that I had for myself which was totally in my control. I couldn't control how a curve would be set in my statistics class (ugh ANOVAs how you KILL ME!), nor could I control how my experimental result would pan out, but I could plan out what I wanted to eat, or how I wanted to flavor it.

Photo courtesy of Infrogmation

We're in the middle of fall, which means pumpkin recipes are floating around the internet and being featured in magazines galore. I love pumpkin. In general I'm a fan of most squashes (I love making a great squash bake). But this week, I was craving some pumpkin pie or pumpkin bread. I followed a seemingly simple recipe, but in my haste, forgot one key ingredient - brown sugar. HA. The pumpkin pie filling smelled great baking in the oven - the taste on the other hand, it had this awful aftertaste of too much cinnamon that would have been ignored had I put in some sugar. It was so sad. Some people are just not fit to be bakers. Myself in particular, I lack the structure or discipline to follow the strict recipe - I usually end up eye-balling measurements, throwing things here and there, hoping it will turn out okay. I think after today, I'm going to leave the baking to MOH (he makes the best gluten free, vegan, oatmeal raisin cookies!) In cooking, there's much more flexibility. You can work off the backbone of a recipe and add your particular flair without being too concerned about something turning out badly.

I think to be a great baker, you need to have the eye for creativity, but the knowledge of chemistry in order to create something wonderful. The correct measurements and ratio of flour: eggs: sugar are so key and often mean the difference between something tasting too "eggy" versus "airy," "dense" versus "light," or in my case, "good" versus "gross."

Carrot cupcakes courtesy of Jaimie N - these cupcakes taste as good as they look!

Luckily for most of us non-bakers, we often surround ourselves with friends and family who are AMAZING bakers! I'm fortunate to have friends who bake some of the most beautiful and tasteful desserts. The photo above is from Jaimie N., a friend from San Diego who does some of the most creative desserts. Like what you see? If so, you're in luck because Jaimie will be featured in a December post spotlighting some of her favorite desserts!

I decided to redeem myself and tried to make a pumpkin bread this time. I had blown through a can of pumpkin puree, didn't satisfy my pumpkin craving, and needed a pick-me-up after a long week. I used the backbone of a recipe but decided to make modifications of my own because I couldn't wrap my head around the idea of using 4 eggs and 4 cups of flour for a bread recipe - seriously? The end result was a hybrid between a pumpkin bread/pumpkin bread pudding that tasted pretty good! It reminded me of a pumpkin version of Vietnamese souffle cake, this soft, moist cake. Happy mistake on my part for the extra surprise, and I'll take it!

Ingredients:
- 15 ounce pumpkin puree
- 2 eggs
- 1/3 cup oil
- 1/6 cup of water
- 3/4 cup of gluten free all purpose flour
- 1 tsp of baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp ground nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp ground cloves
- 1/4 tsp ground ginger

Protocol:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Celsius
2. Mix pumpkin puree, eggs, water, oil and sugar
3. Add in rest of dry ingredients, making sure evenly distributed
4. Pour onto a greased loaf pan
5. Bake for 50 minutes or until cooked through
6. Let cool - bread tastes even better if left out overnight.


Hopefully you guys like this rendition of pumpkin bread! If you like your bread not as moist, I'd suggest halving the amount of pumpkin since I actually doubled the normative amount of pumpkin.

Until next time, happy eating all!