Baking Goals 2020

My Mom taught me to bake when I was around 10 years old. It started with oatmeal raisin cookies which were my Dad’s favorite. I volunteered to bake anything Mom needed to bake. Most of these things were from box mixes except the cookies of course which was a recipe out of Mom’s Better Homes and Garden cookbook. But I truly fell in love with baking when I attempted to make sticky buns from scratch. Mom, Dad, my younger sister and I LOVED sticky buns and he’d buy them whenever we visited Lancaster or Gilbertsville. Going to go off topic a moment to talk about Gilbertsville. The actual name was Zerns Farmer’s Market but no one in the family called it by name. I remember visiting my Grandparents and my Dad asking them if they wanted to “come along to Gilbertsville.”

Zerns Farmer’s Market. Part of my childhood during the 60s and 70s, now closed.

Gilbertsville is a memory folded in the aroma of fresh baked goods, Amish meals, baby chicks and ducks that were sold near Easter and little, glass, drinking birds that would bob their heads up and down as we walked by the stall that sold them.

We always wanted one but Dad always said no. I finally got my drinking bird several years ago when Jay bought it for me. And that ends the trip down memory lane, for now.

As a baker I’m a whiz at cakes, cupcakes and all the basics but watching The Great British Bake Off for several years makes me want to expand my baking goals. Listing them all would take more time and space that’s necessary but I’ll post images along with the recipes I use for each new bake that I try. My goal is to try one new baking recipe each month starting with February.

This month’s bake goal recipe is French macarons. Jay loves them and I’ve always wanted to try and bake them myself. After perusing the internet for days I’ve settled on the macaron recipe from Preppy Kitchen. Why? I enjoyed John’s video instruction a lot and have watched it three times and I’ll probably watch it three more times before I bust out the ingredients.

Stay tuned. This could go very well or it could flop. It’s a finicky dessert and there are so many things that can go wrong. Fingers crossed.