Occasional Paper 2
Preheat to 350
People often ask me why I bake so much.
I just…I love each ingredient, and how it waits patiently on the shelf. There’s the flour, the blank page. With it, you can add sugar, eggs, butter, baking powder…anything your heart desires, really. Each ingredient has its niches and roles to be filled (pun intended). Each holds its breath, waiting for its chance to be part of something incredible. And I, with my bowl in one hand and mixer in the other, have the power to bring that potential to life.
I become the conductor. I can make them into anything I want them to be. For example, the simple white of an egg. If I whisk egg whites for one amount of time, they will be soft and marshmallow-y, a bite of a cloud that you squish against the roof of your mouth. But, if I whisk them for longer, they can become hard and crackly when baked, but dissolve into thin air upon contact with your tongue. If I mix them with sugar and water, I can make an icing that’s runny enough to write a name, but will dry solid enough to support the eaves of a gingerbread house. If I pour boiled sugar and butter into them, I can make a frosting that’s fluffier than air and more delicious than any other butter cream you can imagine. If I mix in Tylose, I can make a paste that I can mold like taffy into life-like flowers whose dainty opaque petals you’d have to touch to be sure they weren’t real.
Is that not incredible?
The possibilities are endless, and the ingredients are anxious to begin. Anxious to mingle. Then to dance. To jive, or to waltz. But then to bicker, and fight, and brawl, and wage war. To sing to one another, and harmonize…or create a cacophony that will curdle your sanity. To rhyme in time, or step off the beaten path and skip. Some melt into each others arms and become one, and bind in a resolution of differences. Some need to be pummeled and scorched before they can make peace. Some will float, becoming so fluffy and light they could be skimmed from a cloud as the foam is off a latte. Some will become so stubborn and obstinate they need to be forged with immense effort. They all wait to see which fate will become of them. They wait to rise, to simmer, to thicken. To brown, to bake, to sear. They wait to become a part of something more. Don’t we all?
Then there are the endless possibilities of decoration. As Lindsey sees the blinking cursor and Kiki sees an empty canvas, I see a freshly baked cupcake. Will this one have a filling, or icing, or frosting? Or do I dare attempt fondant? Sweet, rosey, and pliable, this playdough of the pastry world drapes across a frosted cake like a silk tablecloth with a surface as flawless as a blanket of new-fallen snow. And from there, what? Stripes? Dots? Plaid? Flowers? Swirls? Rose swirls? A tiny mushroom fairy house, perhaps! Or simply whipped cream and fresh fruit? There’s really no wrong answer.
It’s incredible, to just let the creative possibilities run wild. I can take all the stress from the week and let it flow out of my mind and my heart through the 4B Star Tip onto the comforting cushion of a cupcake. I arrange the sprinkles until it’s perfect. It’s a sensational feeling, to create something beautiful and perfect, even when I feel far from it myself. Then I’ll arrange it, wrap it, and give it to someone that I think could use some love.
And then they smile. A blissfully naïve smile. They don’t know that what that smile is tasting behind those teeth could have been any of an infinite number of possibilities and combinations, and yet that one single cupcake was chosen and beaten and poured and baked and cooled and frosted and sprinkled just for them at that very moment for that very smile.
They don’t know it, but I do.
That’s why I bake.
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