Adventures in Baking

Allow me a brief interlude in my usual style of writing, for I'm not my usual self today. Today, I let myself be swayed by a single whimsical emotion and stirring.

"Who wants to have ADVENTURES?!?!?!?!" was the sudden scream I found myself listening to this afternoon. Oh and I was the one screaming.

That's right, adventures. This all began in the midst of an intense round of cleaning the house, when suddenly I was struck by the desire to bake. And not just bake any old regular dessert or pastry. No, I wanted Hamantaschen. To be more specific, I have recently discovered a blog belonging to a linguist and food(read: dessert)lover who is prone to insanely amazing photography. www.dessertsforbreakfast.com is my recent discovery and I must say I've been wanting to try out her recipes but never had the time (or the ingredients) to bake these luscious, eye-pleasing, mouth-watering desserts.

Until today that is. Since I realized I had more or less a free day, what with everything clean and the clothes just dancing in the dryer, I decided to go ahead and have an adventure. An adventure in baking.

So I rounded up the ingredients and started preparing the dough for Hamantaschen. With the wrong type of sugar. And I put it in the fridge for an hour, like the recipe said, and waited. I set my oven to 350 degrees (which turns out to be about 45 degrees higher than my oven actually needs). I rolled the dough, cut out 3-inch circles, folded up the "edges of the circles," and pinched the edges together.

However, I folded my circles into 4 and not 3, so I ended up with squares instead of triangles. In the unnecessarily high heat, my squares (reminiscent of hollowed out pillows) crumbled and the edges fell flat. The strawberry filling bubbled over and spilled out. To be honest, the cookies didn't cook as fast as the filling and they looked atrocious. Slightly horrifying and mortifying, leaving me feeling like a failure as a woman (I know it's insane and we're all past that whole "women should all be able to cook well" thing, but I felt like a failure for a little bit).

And then I ate one. THE most delicious cookie I've ever made. Batch number two was modified and all aspects re-evaluated. Batch number two looks astoundingly better, but it's all gone without any photographic evidence except for crumbs, and I no longer feel like a failure. In fact, I feel successful. Not just as a woman, but as a person in general who can create something out of nothing. Amazing what milk and cookies can do for you. Oops, I mean Hamantaschen and milk. Definitely trying out the Hamantaschen again, hopefully with more results more visually-appealing than this:

After my most delicious adventure in baking (with minimal mess, if I may say so myself), I feel more inspired to cook and bake more often. As soon as I round up the more obscure baking ingredients and utensils.