Things I love: Baking

Well, I really love to eat baked goods.  And the dough stage of baked goods.  And the final, fresh from the oven product.  So I suppose baking is just a secondary love to all of that.

I made cookies today! Chocolate chip, my absolute favorite:

To let you in on a little secret, here's how I bake:

1. Start craving cookies.

2. Find an acceptable looking recipe online.

3. Wash all of the dishes that you need (because really, why would they be clean already?).

4. Begin to get out ingredients.

5. Search the fridge in depth for that butter you know you have somewhere in there.

6. Clean out all of the old food from the fridge because it's gross and crowded.

7. Find the applesauce you were going to use as oil, and then throw it away because it's gone bad.

8. Resign yourself to not baking anything, because you don't have what you need and it's better for you this way anyway.

9. Get antsy and decide to make it work.

10. Start putting ingredients into the bowl, in approximately the right proportions that the recipe says.

11. Use substitutions that may or may not work (shortening for oil? sure they're the same).

12. Get tired of using measuring devices and start just eyeballing it.  

13. Change the type of flour and sugar because it'll taste so much better that way! (Or more realistically, because you're out of normal flour.  Self rising is fine as long as i don't add the baking powder, right?)

14. Just keep adding things until it looks about the right consistency.

15. Take the bowl out of the mixing stand and bring it to the couch.  Eat it while writing about how delicious it is.

Oh, you want to know how the cookies actually baked?  I'll let you know when I bake them.