I should preface this by stating that I have always wanted to be a great baker. The kind that dazzles everyone with her mouth-watering creations but the reality is, it has just never been my ‘thing.’ I am truly fascinated with the entire scope of baking and everything it entails and I’ve ordered books from famous pastry-chefs in the hopes of learning how to create the kind of masterpieces you see on Cake Boss simple, modest desserts. Those books are sitting on my shelf, barely touched. Every once in a while I dust them off and crumple the pages to make it look like they’ve been used. They haven’t. Not ever. I suppose it’s because I’m not very meticulous with respect to precise measuring. Countless times, I have added a ‘touch’ more sugar or a ’tad’ more chocolate or even a ‘smidge’ more lemon (because everyone knows lemon makes everything taste better in baked goods.) I am quickly learning however that with baking, I simply should not surrender to my laissez-faire style of mixing and combining.
When my daughter came home and told me she had tasted the ‘best sugar cookie on the planet’ purchased at her school cafeteria, I felt she was giving me a subliminal message. I mean, is it necessary for a child to plead for weeks on end for her mother to bake her favorite cookie?
I had every intention of sticking to the recipe, and I did for the most part. Did I add more lemon maybe? A touch more zest perhaps? Guilty. This time however, they actually tasted good. Really good. I used this wonderful recipe by the cookie-goddess herself and they turned out crispy on the outside and soft and chewy in the middle ( just as she promised they would.)
So, here’s what I’ve learned. When it comes to baking, stick to exact measurements with staples like flour, eggs, sugar and baking powder. When it comes to aromatics like zests or extracts, even liqueurs, it’s okay to fine-tune the formula to suit your taste, and really, that’s what I believe yields amazing recipes. Tweaking and adjusting things- adding more or less of something, or perhaps omitting it altogether.
I’m also including a recipe for a batch of brownie cupcakes I made. They were topped with chocolate peanut butter icing and dark chocolate chunks. It’s a recipe my mother-in-law gave me over a decade ago and I made them for the first time last week. The only thing I did differently was add more dark chocolate morsels and frankly, when has adding more chocolate ever been a bad thing?
