To bake or not to bake, that is the question.

Baking is just not my thing.  I love to eat baked goods, but the process of making them... bleh. 

Maybe it is because it is so exact.  No taste testing along the way to see if you a need a bit more of this, a pinch of that. 

Or maybe it is because it tries your patience.  You work so hard, create something that (cross your fingers!) will be delicious, and then you plop it in the oven and wait.  The smell starts taking over the house, and yet you still need to wait.  Then you take it out and let it cool, waiting some more.  But sometimes I don't want to wait, darn it!  Sometimes I want it now.

Honestly, though, I think it is a little bit of those things combined with my own baking experiences.  Not counting the times I "helped" my mom in the kitchen (which I am old enough to now know really means "made the process long and drawn out and little messier than needed"), I have not had that many successful baking experiences.  My made from scratch brownies always turn out a bit dry, my cookies a bit flat, my cakes merely "OK".  I called my grandma one day to get help with cookies because, as we all know, grandmas are the queens of cookie-making.  She listened to me patiently explain what I was doing and then asked her for advice in getting my cookies a little more, well, cookie-like.  "Honey," she sighed, "why don't you just do it like normal people?  Go to the store and buy some Pillsbury."

Hmph.

And I really don't want to tell you about the time I mistook olive oil for canola oil in Paulo's favorite Brazilian cake...  let me just say that is smelled delicious.  But smells and tastes can be quite different.  Trust me.

But my banana-nut bread it good.  It is proof that I can do some baking right.

Tonight I am at the baking thing again.  I am hosting a baby shower tomorrow and since it is for a boy baby that is on his way, I thought blueberry coffee cake sounded good to go along with everything else that will be blue there.  Of course, instead of  the 25 minutes prep time that it said it would take, I took 55.  My workspace was small and my kitchen became messy.  And I have a little burn on my finger.  But it is smelling really good.  REALLY GOOD.  Let's just hope that this time the smells and the tastes match up!

My workstation for tonight. 

(I told you I have a small kitchen.)