A ‘hot out of the oven’ gastronomical affair to remember- Biscuits, cookies, cakes and many more baked goodies in store
See, the thing with hobbies is, one it takes your mind off the humdrum nitty gritties of survival in this so-called ‘cut-throat’ world and second, hobbies over time take on a cathartic form that help to expend and explore ones innermost passions (read, obsessions) in a way that the world can understand and associate easily with.
In simpler terms, lets put it like this, say you’re an avid rock climber and have scaled Gibraltar Rock (in Santa Barbara, California) people would think of you as a swashbuckler, with a streak of adventurism. Likewise, say you are a book worm, your peers and friends would normally assume you to be an erudite inkhorn, one with worldly knowledge at the tip of their tongues. Now, lets say your passion is baking and baked goodies in every shape, colour, flavour and form is what makes your world go round, brings the twinkle to your eye and puts a skip in your step, then, my friend, what does the world naturally assume about you?
Smells like heaven
Quite unknowingly perhaps, bakers across the world put their love for baking at the forefront of their forms of self expression and in doing so, put across a gentle message to everyone, one that is best paraphrased by the quote ’life is better with fresh baked cookies’. In other words, baking is love made visible.
Now here its important to appreciate the fact that fresh baked cookies is just one part of the happiness, what we’re really referring to is the entire circle of joy, i.e, the freshly baked goodies that make life so much better, be it in the form of biscuits, cookies, cakes, cream rolls, sweet breads, well, just about everything sweet that comes out of the oven.
Ready Steady Bake
When Audrey Hepburn said ‘’Lets face it, a good creamy chocolate cake does a lot for a lot of people; it does for me’’ she had really encapsulated the magic that baked goodies brings to peoples lives. A fact that can be seen in the endless queue of customers lining up outside famous bakeries waiting patiently for their bit of heaven or the eager anticipation of enthusiasts when a particular favourite goodie is made available on order instantly.
Dedicated baking aficionados enthusiastically scour magazines and the internet looking for their next home baked inspiration while many others, especially the time pressed ones, ensure that they’re a step ahead by pre-ordering their baked weaknesses directly home.
How it all started
Baking, it is thought is not all the glaze and frost as it appears today, in fact sometime in the middle ages baking was considered to be a rich mans privilege and a wood-burning stove was the choice of gadget for baking breads. Of course, the richer you were the better your stove and therefore the better your bread would be.
Interestingly, the transportable oven is thought to be an Egyptian discovery and it was they who discovered that it could be a contraption that could be easily carried around. That however was a bit of trivia to chew on. Coming back to the history of baking, it is thought that the 16th-17th centuries saw the advent of rudimentary shaped sweet cakes and the introduction of exotic ingredients such as butter, dried fruits and cream!