The Pleasures of Baking

As the weather cools down a bit up here in the Ithaca area, it makes me all fuzzy and warm thinking about baking. But not as warm and fuzzy as my sister Jennifer felt when she was busy studying glass blowing at Copenhagen's Danmarks Designskole and in Sweden this past summer (check out the photo above). Holy hot oven temperatures. Speaking of glass AND baking, I prefer glass pans to metal, although I admit I don't have much experience with newer types of pans like silicon. I find that metal heats up too quickly and there's a greater chance of burning what you're cooking. I worked with some weird silicon bundt pan once, and I really didn't like it. It's weird baking with that stuff. The cool thing is that Marcus works in Corning, home of the Corning Museum of Glass and the Corning Outlet store! So it's baking heaven there. I love baking! We recently bought a new and improved whisk. Its design promotes faster aeration of eggs, so much so that it may replace having to use an electric mixer! I have yet to use it, but I am excited. I first discovered it while watching "Nigella Feasts" on the food network with Terry-a and Steve...um, Nigella's out of control and every other shot is filled with desperate attempts at phallic symbolism and "sexy momma meets cooking" shots. Very, very disturbing, yet completely amusing. Anyway, as a baking sidenote, I do plan to get back to baking sometime in the not too distant future, I hope. I really want to come up with my own recipes. Right now I make my own adjustments to recipes, which is fun, but I think that I'm at the point where I have a basic understanding of what ingredients contribute to a recipe...so I should progress to creation...not to be confused with creationism, because it's all about progress ...ha ha. But I really do love baking because it requires exact measurements and timing, and that brings me comfort. And the result is usually made of chocolate and is sweet, which doesn't hurt either. Speaking of chocolate, some really inspirational chocolate is Richart chocolate. If you've never tried it, you've missed out. But nothing beats incredible chocolate baked products.