The Baking Block

When last summer flutters through my mind, I see rosewater sunsets, sidewalk chalk, and dusty patio chairs.

Glittered tennis shoes, traffic lights, and wrinkled library books.

Breakfast at Tiffany's, black cherry tea, and flower dresses.

Cake flour, pumpkin pie spice, and parchment paper.

Last August, I combined oats and nutmeg while the sun played peek-a-boo. Because doesn't everybody make oatmeal cookies at six-thirty in the morning?

I sliced peaches and snuggled them inside freshly baked scones.

Huge culinary projects tied up my hours.

I happily boiled dough for homemade bagels or grated lemon zest for blueberry crumble bars.

I made graham crackers from organic clover honey and treated each little spice-swirled square as a newborn infant.

I had a baking schedule. Cream puffs on Monday, peanut butter blondies on Wednesday, and pull apart bread Friday because it's the weekend and everyone rings in the weekend with bread. 

Then the school year arrived and my days were filled with physics assignments and English reading.

I graduated in June with ample time for all of the fantastical pastries and treats and entrees I didn't get the chance to create last summer.

But there was something off this year.

My choux pastry cream wasn't finger-licking good. Buttery shortbread cookies I cut made my stomach queasy. Anything with chocolate was glossy and unappetizing.

So reasonably, I was frustrated. I wasn't even cracking eggs perfectly anymore; the white shell crumbled to microscopic jagged triangles. And I would stand over the mixing bowl, my hands covered in egg whites, and blame the egg. It was just a bad egg. Just a bad egg. So I would sigh and get to half-heartedly mixing.

And the eggs weren't the only things frustrating me.

I didn't know what to make. For the first time, I lost my eagerness for cuisine. Even sitting in a kitchen proved too draining for my psyche.

Strange, really. The girl who kneads cinnamon rolls from scratch every Friday night before Say Yes to the Dress couldn't find a reason to slice up some sugar cookies.

And one night, when I went to go slide in a batch of horrendously terrible chocolate chip cookies (embarrassing, really, because I truly do consider my chocolate chip cookies to be wonderful), I noticed something strange.

There was something in my old, creaky oven.

A coarse block.

A baking block.

(Was that cheesy? If no, then I am happy. If yes, then I am still happy. Happiness is good.)

So I was faced with a problem. A block of a problem.

There's writers block, everybody knows what writing block is, but have you ever heard of baking block?

You have? Splendid!

Because it's actually not all that uncommon. Baking is a creative process and sometimes, well....sometimes, you just get stuck.

That's what I was. Stuck, stuck, stuck in the middle of a summer, out of luck.

Oh, how it pains me that I didn't bake as much this summer, but that's quite alright.
Sometimes, in life, we have to stumble on bricks, sit on the ground and look our scabby knee, but then get up, wipe the gravel off our palms, and keep dancing forward.

You're probably thinking why you are subjected to this post. You're probably thinking why I'm even bothering posting it instead of saving it as a page in a diary.

But there is a method to my madness.

You see, when I was starting out baking and messing up (which I did. big time. once, eggs accidentally scrambled when I was making lemon bars...it turned out more like nasty scrambled egg bars...ew.), I would just get frustrated with the product which only led to a racing heartbeat and agitation.

Until somebody gave me a really valuable piece of advice.

Baking is a process. It's not an outcome. It's a process. So scoop flour like you're scooping jewels. Melt butter like you're waltzing on Venus. Fold in berries like you're braiding in diamonds. And enjoy the process. It doesn't matter how the product turns out (well, okay, yeah it does) BUT for the sake of your well being, it doesn't.

Burning a cake or scrambling eggs on lemon bars are no big deal. Give yourself a pat on the back, then throw it out and try again tomorrow.

The important thing is that you feel at peace while you are baking. That is the number one secret ingredient.

Cheesy again. I'm a cheeseball today.

Deal with it, please. :)

That's it for this post. Thanks for reading! Also, thanks to my friend Stephanie for eating one of the chocolate chip cookies that day, turning to me and saying they weren't too bad. :)

Enjoy the outskirts of summer. :)

-Susan