My Other Love

As you all know, I love fashion, vintage clothing, adventures, photography, etc., but what you may not know is that I love to bake. Love. To Bake. I will spend hours looking at recipes, going through entire baking/recipe blogs and bookmarking the ones I want to try. I have so many recipes that I want to try, that I get a little overwhelmed sometimes! I'd love to take a vacation where I just bake all day every day and try out different recipes and learn different techniques. A bake-cation, if you will.

[Pumpkin bread. It's not autumn without it!]

I'd have to say that my favorite part about the baking process is decorating. It's an art, and when I can sit there and decorate 30 cookies, I get lost in it. I'll start at 9 P.M. and the next thing I know, it's 1 in the morning and I don't know where the time went.

[This past Christmas's gingerbread family]

[And some special guests.]

Although it's my favorite part, decorating does leave me frustrated sometimes. I'm no expert, so there are times when things don't really come out how I imagined them to or I use the wrong kind of icing or something. But there are times when I discover and try new things, and that's always super exciting (on-the-verge-of nerd-dom kind of exciting). I recently experimented with cookie/royal icing and how to flood a cookie with it and the cookies came out looking pretty good!

[Valentine's Day treats.]

[The rare Loveasaurus.]

I was looking into fondant, but honestly, I prefer the taste of frosting and icing. Fondant looks really pretty, but it doesn't taste as good. Just one of the many things I've learned! It's always so rewarding and exciting when I try something new with baking and it goes as planned. I'm always trying to work at increasing my baking and decorating skills.

[For Easter! The eggs are Reese's Pieces eggs. :)]

[I love any excuse to use graham cracker crumbs in my decorating.]

Although cakes are fun to make and decorate, I think my favorite thing to bake is cookies. I think it's the size. They're portable and snackable! I can never resist a nice, soft and chewy cookie.

[Apple cookies. These things are addicting. Seriously...I get begged constantly to make them.]

[One of my more recent endeavors: Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Cookies.]

Who doesn't love the glorious combination of chocolate and peanut butter? I mean, come on. It's irresistible! Which is why I've made loads of chocolate and peanut butter treats over the years, including this pie:

And this concoction:

[Oreo Peanut Butter Brownie]

Last night I made Apple Pie Cookies and tried a new sugar cookie recipe. I decorated the cookies as flags and stars for Memorial Day. This took a very long time (I started at 8 and went to bed at 3:30 and they're still not done!). I'll have pictures and a post about it soon!

[Ok, I didn't bake this, but I did cook it from scratch, and it's the best mac and cheese I've EVER had.]