We might be living in a food dichotomy of late, where the cult of food has never been more popular. Yet paradoxically, people are actually cooking less than ever before.
But baking seems to be a different kettle of icing sugar. Despite the glorification of the ever-present cupcake shop, home baking has never been more popular.
Cake Clubs in the workplace seem to be thriving, with one friend of mine recently updating her Facebook with the following:
‘I’m going home to bake a Chocolate Guinness Cake. Will be the most popular little worker bee in the News International empire tomorrow, oh yes.’
Baking isn’t going to get you a promotion, but it is fun. Cooking, while hugely enjoyable, has an implicit stress. When you cook for someone, you are giving that person one of their basic needs. There is a certain amount of pressure.
Baking, however, is therapeutic. Baking is Slow. I’m with the humourous American essayist Sloane Crosley, who wrote, ‘Since baking has been my one consistent hobby since pre-school, I often turn to it times of stress.’
Baking is something you do for pleasure. And for me, it’s a better way to use up leftover food. There’s only so many soups and casseroles you can make. Carrot cake, courgette cake and banana bread are other ways you can use up a glut of produce.
Or, you can go one further by making the compost cookie. This little cookie (with the admittedly off-putting name) began in hip New York eatery Momofuku, when its Milk Bar chef, Christina Tosi, needed to use up various bits that would soon go stale in the kitchen.
Tosi added crushed pretzels, potato chips, coffee, oats, butterscotch and chocolate chips to her basic dough – creating what is now a Stateside phenomenon.
Intrigued, I made some with what was lurking in my own cupboard: dried cranberries, tortilla chips, marshmallows, a bar of dark chocolate.
And you know what? They were delicious. Baking might be a Slow art, but those cookies were gone. Fast.
Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net
