I set out to learn how to bake three months ago, and it’s been a sweet road of cookies and cakes. There were delicious successes and spectacular failures. An interesting phenomenon is that I can’t make anything right the second time around. It’s a case of beginner’s luck, and I’m sick of it. Don’t get me wrong, I still ate that soggy blueberry cake.
I can hear the “ewwww” from here. Eww, maybe. Throwing out somewhat edible food is a hard pass unless it’s expired.
It’s been a very entertaining ride. I learned a lot, and I tried to reinforce what I learned by consistently practicing and taking notes in my food journal, and writing about the basics in my blog.
The point of my blog posts about baking was to help me retain the information I was learning, an exercise I borrowed from the book Soft Skills: The Software Developer’s Life Manual. The author, John Z. Sonmez, argues that teaching what you’re learning is a good way to reinforce what you’ve learned.
I think I accomplished that.
While I didn’t have the audience strictly in mind as I typed up each post, I hope that anyone who’s curious about learning how to bake finds the information I published helpful. Learning how to bake can be intimidating, and I wanted to show that you don’t have to have the latest and greatest equipment or an extensive knowledge of terminology and techniques to bake a simple recipe from scratch.
So…where do I go from here?
We all know that grocery items are expensive right now because we’re all feeling the pinch. I’m going to be honest with you: baking consistently is expensive.
While you don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on equipment, you might end up spending a hundred dollars or more at the supermarket trying to buy every ingredient in a recipe. Case in point, I paid $16 for a bottle of vanilla bean pods because I had the wonderful (ridiculous!) idea to make choux pastries with chocolate filling.
Guess how many pods were in the bottle? TWO! Two vanilla bean pods for $16.
The cashier made a comment, and I smiled and waited until I was out of the supermarket to say, “What the fuckity fuck?! $16 for two vanilla pods?!” I didn’t stop myself from buying them because I had purchased other ingredients for the recipe, and I was dead set on making this recipe.
The worst part is that I wasted the vanilla pod because I completely ruined the choux pastry, which I had to toss because it was beyond repair.
You may be saying aloud, “You should’ve looked for a cheaper brand.” Unfortunately, there wasn’t a cheaper alternative, and I lack the experience to substitute ingredients in a recipe. It was an expensive lesson.
All of this is to say that I’m cutting back on baking once a week to baking every two weeks, maybe even to once a month. I really wanted to bake once a week for the remainder of the year to continue leveling up my baking skills, but my goodness was I spending a lot at the grocery store (baking ingredients plus regular groceries for the week).
I wasn’t even baking anything outrageous with the exception of the choux pastry idea. And I definitely wasn’t buying popular brands. I am not loyal to any brand. My fealty lies with my weekly grocery budget, and I couldn’t stay within budget most of the time even when I bought the supermarket’s brands.
Another reason I wanted to keep baking every week was to eventually combine my baking skills with my next endeavor: photography. I wanted to dabble in food photography by July.
While it’s not essential to know how to cook or bake to become a food photographer, most professional food photographers have a culinary background. Baking every week for six months, my thinking went, would afford me the right level of experience to begin photographing my baked creations.
It can still happen, but I definitely feel less confident about that plan now.
It’s important to weigh the financial expense of a hobby with the level of joy it brings you. We often forego an activity because we’re afraid of how much it’s going to cost over time, and rightfully so. Our basic needs need to be met before we decide to heavily invest in a hobby that may or may not make us consistently happy.
I’m forgoing baking every week because I can’t continue to overspend on groceries. I could reduce spending in another area, but I already did that to accommodate my new gym membership.
One activity I will not sacrifice is going to the gym.
So as the first quarter of 2024 ends, so does my weekly stint at baking. I think baking every two weeks or once a month is not bad for the time being. It’ll free up much needed time for the next skill I’d like to learn.
I had a blast watching baking videos on YouTube and scanning my cookbooks for delicious recipes to bake. I’m really happy I tried this because now I understand basic terminology and techniques, and I kind of know what I’m doing.
Kind of.
On to the next aventura!
Congrats on this journey and I especially liked how you took into account how it affected your budget!